Anyone interested in world events had to scroll way down the digital edition of the lizard Oz this morning to discover this yarn...
... but if anyone scrolled down to the bottom of that tale of the apocalypse, they'd discover it was a pick up from the Sunday Times, with not a single mention of climate change, ghosted in a way worthy of the local reptiles ...
By way of contrast, there were a number of mentions of the climate crisis in Graudian coverage, including in the header, Pedro Sánchez says Spain is suffering effects of climate crisis as firefighters battle wildfires in France, Blazes near Madrid coming under control but efforts to contain huge fire near Bordeaux hampered by windy conditions
... including these lines...
Speaking at an advance firefighters’ command post west of Madrid, the prime minister warned that Spain and Portugal were experiencing the varied consequences of the climate emergency, from fires and storms to heavy snowfalls. “The entire Iberian peninsula is suffering the effects of the climate emergency in a very specific way,” he said.
And this ...
The EU commissioner for crisis management, Hadja Lahbib, told the BBC it was likely that damage from wildfires would exceed previous records. “Last year, one million hectares burned during the summer and so we are expecting to face another historic, sad record because the season has started earlier in the year,” she said.
If assorted European countries followed the lead of mad King Donald, Faux Noise's favourite leader, it'd be tariffs at ten paces for all.
Please stick with the pond, because eventually Lord Downer will provide a payoff to the apocalypse.
Meanwhile, at the top of the page, the Australian Daily Zionist News went about its usual jihads ...
Policy flawed: Marles’ private admission on Hamas stance
Richard Marles knew Labor’s Israel-Palestine platform wording was flawed before throwing his factional weight behind it, as the daughter of a Bondi massacre victim slams the wording of the platform.
By Greg Brown and Noah Yim
Even this sobbing about data centres - won't someone think of the tech bros? - dropped a mention of the main Daily Zionist News business for the day ...
Revealed: the radical policy demands Labor kept behind closed doors
Secret files reveal Labor faction demands: data centre tax, union-run companies, people’s bank
Labor’s tightly scripted national conference hid a far more radical agenda – with unions pushing to strip CEOs of power and tax AI data centres.
By Noah Yim
... with link back to the lead yarn to make sure the hive mind didn't miss it ...
The Australian can now reveal the radical left-wing policies that party delegates argued for at the national conference that leadership killed off before they could be presented on the conference floor.
... and which in one iteration began with a wild-eyed Ed terrifying the reptile readership ...
Meanwhile, over on the extreme far right, simpleton Simon added to this reptile chorus.
In recent weeks three pieces of research have sought to examine how Australia’s political establishment is under siege.
By Simon Benson
Political analyst
Crosby Textor?
Nah ... not Crosby Textor, so it's the intermittent archive for him ...
Meanwhile, also over on the extreme far right, the usual reptiles were hard at work expanding the jihad in the usual way ...
The terror groups spoke. The journalists didn’t. Hamas has admitted some of its dead ‘reporters’ were fighters, yet the world’s biggest newsrooms have refused to correct the record.
By Chris Mitchell
Columnist
By this time the pond was fully into sampling the smorgasbord and quickly moving on ...
A lesser member of the diaspora of the Kelly gang decided to add to the Major's jihad ...
Labor Friends of Israel co-convener Mike Kelly has sounded the alarm over extremist ‘entryism’ threatening to corrupt the ALP from within after last week’s national conference.
By Mike Kelly
The pond couldn't take it, and had a massive hissy fit, followed by a major sulk.
As usual, when the reptiles get in this mood, the pond always turns to Haaretz for an alternative ... Even if Israel Cracks Down on Violent Settlers, The Violence of the Occupation Will Remain (sorry, paywall)
With the paywall limiting the intermittent archive, the pond felt the need to show more data and a handy graph tracking the ethnic cleansing ...
And having used up all that space serving up the smorgasbord, the pond decided it only had room for one full appearance, and luckily that was Lord Downer himself ...
The header: We’ve turned against the beliefs that made us a rich country; Everybody has their own pet theory for why Australia has performed so poorly over the past two decades. There are two key factors.
The caption for the snap: Anthony Albanese during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman
His Lordship spent a bigly four minutes rambling through a golden past, as ancient warriors are wont to do, and the pond found it all quite soothing and relaxing ...
In the wake of the global financial crisis, the West abandoned liberal economics and retreated to the sclerotic policies of the 1970s: heavy taxes, an expanding welfare state, public, not private, investment, and the return of trade union power. Needless to say, this has led to a decline in the growth of productivity and slow economic growth. In many cases, there has been a decline in real living standards. No surprises there. If you adopt the policies of the 1970s, you’ll get the same results. And so we have. This is a global phenomenon.
But what is particularly chilling is the relative weakness of Australia. Let’s remember that through the first decade of this century, Australia’s economy was seen globally as an outstanding example of success.
From the mid-1980s until the mid-2000s, we deregulated our economy, scrapped tariff protection, privatised government enterprises, reformed the tax system, paid off all government debt and ran budget surpluses.
Everywhere I went in the world as the foreign minister during the first decade of the century, people wanted to know about the Australian economic miracle. We had economic growth rates of between 3 per cent and 4 per cent. Our unemployment rate by 2007 was around 4 per cent. Inflation was negligible and real living standards were growing.
Please, fawn on His Lordship, though for some terrible reason, the pond decided to interrupt the Adelaide hills loon with a snap of bloody lefties, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating during Premiers Conference. Picture: Chris Pavlich
Enough of all that - there's not a single mention of Hawke or Keating in His Lordship's text - and back to Lord Downer waxing full lyrical, in a way which might be described as Dame Groan-lite...
Let’s start with the US. We have gone from being slightly richer than the US to our per capita GDP being just over 70 per cent of America’s. In 2010, America’s per capita GDP was around $US48,000 and Australia’s was $US52,000. By 2025 the US per capita GDP had grown to $US90,000, yet Australia’s had only grown to $US65,000. The point is a very simple one. America’s economy has performed much better than Australia’s over the last 20 years.
So what about the eurozone? In 2010, Australia was approximately 20 per cent richer than the eurozone countries on a per capita basis. By 2025 it was only 9 per cent richer. So, for all the talk of slow growth in Europe and its lack of economic dynamism and entrepreneurship – which is by the way completely justified – Australia has been performing less well than the eurozone.
But surely you’re thinking we would have done much better than the UK. We’re always being told that the UK’s economy is broken, that it is in permanent crisis, that it was devastated by Brexit and that immigration has plunged the country into penury. Well, don’t be too hasty in drawing that conclusion. In 2010, we were approximately 30 per cent richer per capita than the UK, but now that gap has been reduced to around 13 per cent.
The reptiles had a solution. If only the mug punters in the hive mind were lured in by this fabulous collage to break out the purse and tip in a few shekels ...
'Nobody’s interested in Australia anymore': Inside the war reshaping global power
Become a member to access our premium video content
With a mad King Donald sighting, how could the pond resist a 'toon celebrating the WSJ shaking hands with their persecutor?
His Lordship then decided to have an argument with himself, much as the pond finds itself shouting at the TV on occasions ...
Now you can argue with these figures. You can claim, for example, that the Australian dollar has weakened substantially over the past 15 years, and that distorts comparisons.
Oh don't be silly, of course that was only so His Lordship could produce a billy goat butt or three, dressed up as an "However":
After all, Australia is richly endowed with resources and energy; there is no excuse for its weak economic performance. We have also benefited substantially from the economic rise of China and, more broadly, the Indo-Pacific region. Despite all of that, we are performing less well than America, Europe and the UK. Yet 20 years ago, we were admired for our outstanding economic performance. Well, maybe you think there’s some upside to this. Australia, perhaps, has become more egalitarian as private sector investment declines and public sector investment soars.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case either. The measure of inequality is known as the Gini coefficient. Over the past 20 years, it demonstrates that inequality based on household wealth has increased. This is almost certainly a function of the rapid rise in house prices throughout that period.
No doubt everybody will have their own pet theory for why Australia has performed so poorly over the past two decades. There are two key, if not sole, factors.
The first was the reaction to the global financial crisis, which led to a loss of confidence by the establishment, as well as the general public, in the liberal market. It is a model that had served Australia so well in the previous two decades.
This model has been replaced with a social democratic model, which involves huge increases in unprofitable public investment and a rapid expansion of the welfare state. All of this has been funded by a combination of increasing taxes and heavy public borrowing. Common sense tells you this is not a formula for rapid economic growth.
As a sign that the reptiles thought His Lordship was off in cloud cuckoo land, they flung in a distracting snap ...A visitor walks past a giant Euro sign inside the headquarters of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt am Main.
And that's the only mention of the European Central Bank you'll find in His Lordship's offering ... and right on cue, as the perfect follow up to the massive apocalyptic destruction currently being wrought in Europe, His Lordship came up with these noble lines ...
Secondly, the overall obsession by the political class with climate policies has been crippling for Australia. Not only has there been eye-watering amounts of public money pumped into the so-called energy transition, but by establishing a dual system of renewables and conventional fossil fuel electricity generation, there has been a pronounced decline in productivity in the energy sector and a commensurate substantial increase in electricity prices. According to the Productivity Commission, investment in electricity generation since 2001-02 has grown by 126 per cent, and output has grown by 14 per cent, so it’s hardly surprising there has been an astronomical increase in electricity prices.
How's that rain not falling on the plain in Spain? Fancy a smoke-laden Bordeaux?
And so it turned out that His Lordship is as obdurate and as sublimely stupid as he ever was ...
So, it’s as simple as this: if Australia wants to return to high rates of growth and improvements in living standards, it has to re-embrace liberal market economics. People tell me the public are resistant to that. I’m not so sure. Once it’s explained to them it is the only path to rising living standards I think they can be persuaded. After all, we’ve tried the present economic formula in the 70s and 80s, and look where that got us? We tried the liberal market formula in the late 80s to the mid-2000s, and that was a glittering success. We should learn from history.
What did the pond learn from history? His Lordship was a frivolous twat ...
... and nothing has changed.
But what of the quarry whispering Caterist, the pond can hear some correspondents cry?
Sorry, by this point in the early morning, the pond was well over it.
Surely there was enough blancmange in the smorgasbord, and besides, the floodwater whisperer's Labor bashing was too tedious to contemplate.
The pond suggests that a teaser trailer, and an intermittent archive link, personally arranged by the pond will have to do ... ‘Progressive’ Labor ditches workers for social moralising
Not Bill Kelty and the Voice yet again?
And why is it that the reptiles are always moralising about moralising, in essence acting as a kind of tedious thought police for anything outside their monoculture world?
At least the pond now understands why the reptiles wanted to insert a snap of Hawke and Keating in His Lordship's piece ... talk about a pair living rent free in the hive mind.
Besides, for those disappointed this cavalier treatment of the Caterist, be consoled - there's nothing in the quarry whisperer's piece that couldn't be summed up in a few 'toons, because they always disappoint ...
Corrected.
ReplyDelete"the world’s biggest newsrooms have refused to correct the record."
By Chris Mitchell
Husic gave Newscorpse a Gina sized bucket to dump.
ReplyDeleteA spectacular own goal able to be avoided by waiting for the next news cycle. Ed. D'oh! Hold for 2 or 3 days maaate! Yes. Ed has a point. But Newscorpse also needs a point and you provided it at the worst possible time. Missing:
"The pair ended with an embrace."
And providing, as DP says... "the usual reptiles were hard at work expanding the jihad in the usual way".
"That was that."
Ed Husic, by his attack on the ALP Conference Gaza conflict statement completely erased - Newscorpse thrilled - any mention of a joint statements, by Jewish Labor MP Josh Burns and Calwell MP Bassem Abdo. Ed H still moved it. One, only one as even the seconder backed out, allowed for the worst of reporting and news to gleefully highlight division.
Husic needed to hold his nose for at least 48hrs so the "the Australian Daily Zionist News went about its usual jihads" by not leading with dissent causing the complete smothering of any joint Muslim Jewish agreement on two state and
"Former minister Ed Husic (who is Muslim), the rebel of the conference’s corridors, wanted to make the draft much tougher on Israel, including, among other points, a reference to a United Nations inquiry that spoke about genocide.
"Intense negotiations and arm-twisting ensured this came to nothing. Husic’s mooted seconder evaporated. No one else proposed a change in the draft platform (that, however, is still too robust for the Israeli government, which earlier this week issued a public attack via its embassy).
...
Burns told delegates:
Today, this conference has a choice. We can continue to focus on the divisions that pull us further apart, or we can do something far more important. We can stand together. We can choose empathy over outrage, dialogue over division. We can uphold Evatt’s vision for two states, for two peoples living side by side with equal rights, dignity, and security for every single person. Because that is the only pathway to peace that the world longs for.
Abdo said:
This motion is not designed to encompass everything […]. It does not seek to prescribe, to describe, or ascribe every responsibility to every party, nor does it seek to list every circumstance or point that needs addressing. It’s been an incredibly difficult few years on what is an already very difficult issue. No single motion can do justice to it. What it is is a motion of the Australian Labor Party, a party of government and a party for all Australians.
"The pair ended with an embrace.
"That was that.
...
https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-labors-managed-democracy-reaches-high-point-as-blanket-thrown-over-israel-gaza-dissent-288347
Lord Downer - apparently tells us 'We’ve turned against the beliefs that made us a rich country'
ReplyDeleteand that 'Everybody has their own pet theory for why Australia has performed so poorly over the past two decades. There are two key factors.'
The first factor seems to be a rambling skirt around the actual economic elements of the period he says he covers, but that befits someone whose 'Wiki' entry tells us he worked as an economist for one of the 'big' banks, so expect the kind of dissembling that usually comes from talks to business lobby groups.
The second factor seems to be the continuing reptile denial of climate change, and likely human influence on that. As our longest-serving Foreign Minister, he should have been exposed to briefings on climate change. We cannot confirm if he ever read any of that, let alone understood. It is one thing to claim that such denial is a 'belief that made us a rich country', in the year 2026 it is a non sequitur to offer that as a 'belief' that shows the way to future prosperity.
That IS of a piece with his 'chamber of commerce' meanderings around his dubious 'first factor' - that the 'good life' comes from unquestioned 'economic growth', with no adjustment for externalities, and never mind how it is distributed. I guess he watches 'Fox Business', and absorbs that message from Maria, and Kudlow, and the line-up from the Trump cabinet (well, the Emperor's cabinet for this week.)
As befits the leader of the Liberal Party, still with the shortest tenure.
It's a pity just how much the average citizen is abysmally unaware of the failures of politicians and their supporters. Otherwise the gross ignorance of a Lord Downer would not go unnoticed. And people wouldn't be flocking to PHONy because they'd be aware just how much worse she would make things.
DeleteFor one thing, they'd be aware that GDP per capita is highly dependent on how fast capita grows compared with how fast GDP grows. And capita has been growing fast but GDP hasn't been doing too very badly else our GDP per capita would be distinctly less than it is.
But whenever I say something like that, I am aware that what we really need is the human race to become distinctly more intelligent where intelligence = IQ+knowledge. Unfortunately, the majority of the human race has neither as anybody would be able to discern by watching The Chase Australia just a few times.
ReplyDeleteI expect that the Bordeaux winemakers are examining their insurance policies, and wondering about the premiums next year. On which, see The Insurance Retreat: How the Market Is Drawing the Real Map of the Century:
"In March 2025 Günther Thallinger, a board member of Allianz, one of the largest insurers on earth, published an essay arguing that heat and water destroy capital, that flooded homes lose value, that overheated cities become uninhabitable and that entire asset classes are degrading in real time. He argued that at successive thresholds of warming, insurers will simply be unable to offer coverage for many of these risks, because the premium required exceeds what people and companies can pay. Entire regions, he wrote, are already becoming uninsurable."
(The Thalinger article is at https://www.allianz.com/en/mediacenter/news/reports/250724-climate-change-our-responsibility-to-act.html )
No, no, no, Joe: "entire regions are already uninsurable". But don't worry, climate change, we have been well assured, is but a hoax. It will all go away tomorrow after those guys have finished using the result to be able to acquire lots of very cheap property.
DeleteMaps of flood zones of mid North Coast nsw were altered last year.
Delete2020-24 house & contents $2,500
2025 same house same contents $20,000.
Uninsurable.
Munich Re has you covered though. They buy, we pay. It's hot...
"Funds
LU3063723863:EUR
Munich RE Investment Partners Funds SICAV - Global Climate Transition Equity EUR Acc
• PRICE (EUR)120.76
• TODAY'S CHANGE-1.38 / -1.13%
Total returns on €1,000 EUR
5Y
Munich Global Climate Transition Equity
Fund
Global Large-Cap Blend Equity
Morningstar category
(Graph... 1 guess as to the direction of lines.)
"Objective
The Sub-Fund fund aims to provide medium to long term (3 years and longer) capital increase through investments in stocks across mainly developed markets globally, while at the same time promoting certain sustainability (i.e. environmental, social and corporate governance) characteristics and integrating sustainability risks in its investment process.
https://markets.ft.com/data/funds/tearsheet/summary?s=LU3063723863:EUR
Munich Re, socialising and profiting from AGW. It's hot. So hot that...
"Munich Re pulls out
of several climate coalitions
June 10, 2025
GERMANY
Munich Re announced, in a press release issued on 6 June 2025, its withdrawal from several climate alliances, namely the Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance, the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, Climate Action 100+ and the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change.
The German reinsurer cited conflicting regulatory demands and legal uncertainties stemming from inconsistent legal and regulatory frameworks as the primary reasons for its exit, which have increasingly complicated the evaluation of private climate initiatives.
Munich Re will now continue its efforts to combat global warming independently.
https://www.atlas-mag.net/en/articles/munich-re-pulls-out-several-climate-coalitions-0
I don't expect Lord Downer will comment if Trump tries to subvert the US mid-term elections, and fails ('Nothing to see here!'), but what if he succeeds, and America becomes a dictatorship? Would that affect Australia's security?
ReplyDeleteIf we consider the actions and their consequences of such as ICE then one could be pardoned for thinking that America is already well on the way to being a dictatorship but nobody seems to care.
Delete'One could be pardoned', GB - but apparently the going rate is about $US 1 million, 'invested' with Donald Jnr and Eric. Ho ho.
DeleteCounterpoint to Lord Downer's blind boosterism, John Quiggin has given us these comments on the actual world, for this day. It does go on a bit, but he does encourage those of us who subscribe to share. I offer it in two parts - one is 'too long'.
ReplyDeleteThe recent retirement of the Macquarie Group CEO, Shemara Wikramanayake, marks the culmination of a highly successful career. She is leaving the company with shares worth hundreds of millions of dollars after nearly 40 years at the Sydney-based institution. Under her leadership, the “millionaires’ factory” has increased its annual revenue by about 80% and nearly doubled its profit.
Wikramanayake has also overseen and consolidated the group’s transition from a firm specialising in privatised infrastructure to a global merchant bank earning profits from commodity trading, specialist asset finance and wealth management.
Macquarie shareholders, who have tripled their money over the past eight years (with dividends and capital gains), have plenty of reason to be grateful.
The public, in Australia and elsewhere, may take a slightly more jaundiced view. The foundations of the millionaires’ factory were laid through a string of private infrastructure deals that greatly enriched Macquarie while delivering expensive or substandard services.
The biggest disaster of all has been Thames Water, privatised by the Thatcher government in the UK and acquired by a Macquarie-led consortium in 2006. After extracting billions in dividends for itself and other investors, and loading the company with debt, Macquarie sold out in 2017. By that time, the utility’s performance was so dire as to be unsalvageable. Nearly a decade later, the UK government is still grappling with the choice between an unpalatable renationalisation and a hybrid model that is likely to prove unworkable.
In June, Andy Burnham called for public ownership at Thames Water. As parts of Wales are in drought and the rest of the country is experiencing prolonged dry conditions, about 23 million people across the UK are under a hosepipe ban.
Another example worth mentioning is the privatisation of Sydney airport to a Macquarie-led consortium, which promptly raised a wide range of fees and charges. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has repeatedly concluded that the airport is a monopoly and that price monitoring is ineffectual. The issue was predictable – and predicted.
Macquarie was also a pioneer of the private toll road industry, which has left Australian cities saddled with costly transport systems, characterised in the words of a review of the Sydney toll-road system as a “poorly-functioning patchwork”. International deals such as Ontario’s Highway 407 were even worse for the public, though highly successful for Macquarie’s millionaires.
Macquarie Group is not the only corporate giant built on lucrative deals with the public. CSL, one of Australia’s most valuable companies, was created by the privatisation of the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, which had produced a wide range of innovations. The privatised CSL was awarded a long-term contract to supply products derived from blood plasma at a far higher cost.
The resulting cashflow was ploughed into a global acquisition program that made CSL the giant it is today. Meanwhile, research on commercially less attractive products such as antivenoms and vaccines for tropical diseases was scaled down, abandoned or left to universities and public research institutes.
and the rest -
ReplyDeleteOther privatisations have followed a similar pattern of rhetoric about private sector efficiency combined with continued public largesse. Qantas has enjoyed the favoured treatment of a national flag carrier while disclaiming their obligations to either the travelling public or its own employees, beyond those dictated by profit maximisation. Telstra forced us to buy back, at massive expense, the telephone network built under public ownership and sold only a few years previously.
If there is any consolation here, it is that (long after the public) policymakers have finally woken up to the damage done by these deals. Not so long ago, Infrastructure Australia was proclaiming the benefits of innovative finance and universities were offering courses in “financial engineering”. Today these terms are rightly viewed with suspicion. As the UK commentator Anthony Hilton wrote after the crash of Carillion (a major participant in private finance initiatives):
Its demise is also the consequence of the relentless application of a neo-liberal political philosophy that for years has elevated financial engineering above real engineering; off-balance-sheet finance above paying for things openly; and lauded the private sector above the public sector.
Ordinary people can express respect for the achievements of Shemara Wikramanayake at Macquarie Group. But every time you pay a toll or an outrageous airport parking charge, remember that the millionaires’ factory was built from the proceeds of charges like these.
John Quiggin is a professor at the University of Queensland’s School of Economics