In which the bromancer and Dame Groan set the Tuesday pace, with other reptiles sent to the archive ...

 

The reptiles today deployed the hoariest of ancient thriller movie devices ... the ticking clock ...

Are they going to keep that damned thing top of the page for the next two days?

Things must be desperate in the attention-seeking hive mind, with the top of the digital world "news" ma this day just a standard bout of alarmism from the canny Cranson ...

COST OF LIVING
Brace for an extra 30pc on your rent after Labor’s tax changes
Renters facing a housing crisis could be hit with rises of up to 30 per cent after the Albanese government scrapped key investor tax concessions, NAB has warned.
By Matthew Cranston

It's the "could be" that gets the pond. 

Give a shout out when it's a "will be", "are being" or "have been", and the pond will take note of the sky falling in...

As usual, it mainly served as a vehicle for a snap of Albo and Claire looking startled, as if a melon had hovered into view ... (where has melongate gone?)

Luckily the pond didn't have to pay attention beyond that teaser trailer because the bromancer was on the scene, dealing with an imponderable, intractable Faux Noise issue ...

The header: World rides rollercoaster with Donald Trump to midterms; The US midterm elections loom as a defining moment for global politics, shaping international policy in unpredictable ways.

The caption for the mad king: US President Donald Trump boards Air Force One in Morristown, N.J. Picture: AP

The bromancer eventually works his way to "nearly chaotic", a big leap for the hive mind, but it takes him some time to get there, so please be patient, as we wade through the ramble ...

Everything that happens in the world for the next three months will be influenced, if not shaped altogether, by the lead-up to the US midterm elections in November, which at this stage look like being a car crash for Donald Trump and his Republicans.
It will be a tricky period for Australia as the US, and every other nation, will combine, in the most confusing fashion possible, internal and external policy. US enemies will try to influence the outcome. US allies will be worried about even more unpredictability than usual.
The Democrats will win the House of Representatives. In the Senate the race is more finely pitched. The last two years of Trump’s presidency will be characterised by congressional chaos and divided government. The House will devote itself energetically to inquiring into any and all of the strange processes of government that have characterised the administration.
It’s quite likely the House will impeach Trump for a third time. It’s inconceivable Democrats would do well enough to have the 60 members in the Senate necessary to convict Trump.
One lifeline for Republicans is that the Democrats, under the influence of the Democratic Socialists of America, are choosing a number of far-left candidates, such as Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
In some ways it’s shaping as a reverse of the 2022 midterm elections. Trump insisted on backing a number of fairly loopy MAGA candidates for the Senate. They beat more mainstream Republicans in the primaries but lost the Senate races to Democrats.
However, for a dynamic like that to take hold, the Republicans have to be at least in the race. It’s absolutely clear now that the Iranian regime is determined to keep control of the Strait of Hormuz indefinitely, and incidentally hurt Republicans in the midterms.

It wouldn't be a bromancer piece without a gesturing deviant, Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian gesturing as he speaks during a press conference in the capital Tehran. Picture: AFP

Under extreme pressure from his Faux Noise cousins - Has Sean Hannity given up on the Iran war? - the bromancer went a "weirdly" ...

Trump has said so many weirdly self-contradictory things about Iran over the past six months that his words are the least reliable guide as to what might happen. Remember just two weeks ago he said if Iran didn’t make a deal he would unleash the greatest military attack since World War II.
Iran didn’t make a deal and of course Trump didn’t launch such an attack. It’s now a reliable rule of thumb that the more Trump talks of an imminent attack, the less likely it is to take place.
Those folks who think Trump never makes a mistake will say this is all savvy negotiating tactics by Trump. But for a statement to be an effective negotiating tactic it’s necessary for the other party to the negotiation to think the statement has some meaning. The Iranians have worked out that Trump is now mainly bluffing about renewed military actions.

The reptiles then reverted to a much loved image ... Children swim as ships are seen anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Bandar Abbas, Iran. Picture: Getty Images

Realising he might have gone a tad too far, the bromancer organised a hasty retreat, because there must always be indecisions and revisions, and not just in an Eliot poem ...

This is not to damn Trump altogether. His administration has done some very good things and some very bad things. The polarised positions on Trump – that he is always the devil versus the idea that Trump is always the only possible saviour – are both wrong. Trump is a mixed grill, like most leaders.
However, I would say Trump is now a victim of his tactics. He is much more tactical than strategic. He saw a tactical opportunity to decapitate Iran and change it forever. The decapitation was tactical, and worked, the permanent change was strategic, and didn’t work.
If Iran had actually been on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons, almost any American action would have been justified. But Trump had told us he had previously totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump envoy Steve Witkoff saying that Iran was within a few weeks of producing a weapon completely lacks credibility and has never been backed up by any evidence.
Iran nonetheless remains an intensely evil regime. It has several times tried to assassinate Trump. For the past two decades it has been the world’s chief state sponsor of terrorism. It’s on the record that Tehran has undertaken cyber espionage against civilian infrastructure in the US. As artificial intelligence develops, this kind of capability will become more lethal.
The biggest US enemy, the People’s Republic of China, will also be working to affect the outcome of the US midterm elections. In the past couple of weeks there have been credible reports of Beijing backing pro-Palestine groups in both the UK and the US. This suits Beijing’s interests because it sows hatred and division within Western societies.

All good, but then the bromancer had to deal with the elephant in the room ...

That had sent Tom Nichols in The Atlantic into a state of hysteria, Trump Will Make South Korea Pay For His Iran Humiliation, His rage is driving him to make irrational policy choices. (*intermittent archive link)

...When Trump makes the effort to say something is “unrelated” to his actions (and then adds a coy question mark) it usually means it is completely related—and probably his central motivation.
Scaling back the exercise is, of course, an insane decision, which does nothing but hurt an ally, and tempt an adversary to think—correctly—that American leadership is feckless. You could be forgiven for wondering why South Korea and the rest of the free world must pay for Donald Trump’s failures. Such confusion is understandable, except that in Trump’s world, every loss, every defeat, is a personal insult. When things go wrong, someone must be held responsible—and that someone is never Donald Trump.
America and the rest of the world are now witnessing a public exhibition of narcissistic rage. Trump embarked on a war for personal glory, and what he got instead was ongoing humiliation. He clearly finds it all unbearable.
Trump both fears and respects the autocrats who rule Russia, China, and North Korea, and so he dares not cross them. Instead, he is seeking to assuage the psychic injury of his loss in Iran—including the American public learning of the shameful conditions to which he has subjected U.S. forces—by kicking America’s allies, the nations he can punish without fear that they will kick him back.
The Iran war was not the president’s failure, you see. Others failed the president. Those disloyal South Koreans, who every few years drag him into a needless confrontation with that respectful and peace-loving young man in Pyongyang, refused to help him topple the Iranian regime. And because Trump is unable to subdue Iran, unable to replenish stocks of U.S. weapons he should never have expended in this war, unable to take care of the service personnel he has put in harm’s way, someone is going to pay. The most convenient target he could find, at least for the moment, was South Korea.
At a better moment in American history, an enraged Congress would step in and demand answers about such dangerous idiocy. They would rush to the White House, talk to the press, hold hearings, and in general act like responsible stewards of American power. Those days, at least among legislators of the president’s party, are long past. They will take whatever Trump dishes out. Our allies might for the time being similarly ignore Trump’s tantrums, but they have power and agency of their own, and even now are likely planning for a world in which the Americans are no longer men and women of principle who stand by their word and by their friends.
The Chinese and the Russians and the North Koreas are certain to draw the appropriate lessons from this deranged policy. They have been shown, yet again, that when Trump fails, he hurts those he feels safe hurting. Already, North Korea is dispatching missiles and thousands of soldiers to aid Russia in its war on Ukraine. If a conflict should break out in the Pacific or on the Korean peninsula, or if the war in Europe spreads further West, the world’s dictators might well count on Trump to focus American wrath not on the enemies of the free world, but on the nations that have always pledged to stand side by side with the United States in a mutual defense of freedom.

And the bromancer himself has form in this area. 

When he's not organising a war with China by Xmas, he could reliably be found berating North Korea ...

Mad North Koreans can destroy Australia
We must make ourselves indispensable to US interests.

That didn't age well, and how he has to bite the bullet, verging towards his own kind of incoherence ...

Rather bizarrely, Trump has now issued a fusillade of abuse against US ally South Korea for not joining US military efforts against Iran (neither did anyone else). He has ordered that US joint military exercises with South Korea be curtailed. In his Truth Social post, Trump said such exercises “send a signal to a Country (North Korea) which since Donald J Trump has been president, has been unthreatening and respectful”.
This is one of the most bizarre things Trump has ever said. Pyongyang has sent tens of thousands of troops to aid Russia, rapidly expanded its nuclear missile force, and supplied Moscow with artillery and weapons in exchange for military hi-tech.
Yet Trump also plans to put punitive tariffs on nations that buy Russian oil and gas. That’s totally incoherent. One possible explanation: Could there be Washington/Pyongyang back channel talks under way?
At the same time, Trump has changed the name of the US regional military command from Indo-Pacific Command to Pacific Command, which signals some kind of retreat in ambition, while US Defence under secretary Elbridge Colby explained he no longer calls China out by name because the Trump administration now wants to avoid harsh rhetoric with China because this might lead to war.

Et tu, Elbridge? Elbridge Colby, US under secretary of defence. Picture: Getty Images

It was a sad and sorry bromancer that had to move on from "most bizarre" and finally wheel out that "nearly chaotic" ...

This is all incoherent and nearly chaotic. 

Fear not, there's always a billy goat butt from this kind of billy goat:

Yet the US remains our indispensable ally. 

What do do? is there some sand handy, because the bromancer is feeling very ostrich:

The best policy for Australia, in this turbulence and confusion, is to keep our head down, avoid personal confrontation with Trump, and continue to deepen institutional linkages with the Pentagon and other US institutions that will outlast Trump.
The Albanese government is actually managing the US relationship pretty well. The other thing we should do is build our own formidable defence force. The Albanese government’s not doing that much at all.

Sheesh, is that any way to treat a master detective?

With that done, the pond delicately stepped past the bouffant one ...

ALP’s veterans debacle a self-inflicted wound
A minister who could not find time to meet veterans somehow found it within two hours after they staged a dramatic public gallery walkout at Parliament House.
By Dennis Shanahan
National Editor

The old lizard Oz foot soldier could only manage a "less than two minute read", so the pond personally saved it to the archive ...

Ditto the pond had no interest in this yarn ...

A plea to keep faith in our cultural diversity
Two of Sydney’s most prominent religious leaders have united across faiths to warn that monoculturalism would deepen social divisions.
By Kanishka Raffel and Benjamin Elton

This said all the pond needed to know ...

...Yes, a flawed multiculturalism can be damaging, but the better alternative is not to retreat into a monocultural illusion that neglects history and human nature. We can take inspiration from the variety of the Australian bush or the cityscape of our home in Sydney, with its churches, synagogues, mosques and temples. We should invest our efforts in nurturing a form of collaborative multiculturalism that serves Australia and all its people, creating an Australia that is stronger precisely because it is diverse.
Rabbi Dr Benjamin Elton is Chief Minister of The Great Synagogue in Sydney. The Most Reverend Kanishka Raffel is the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney.

The pond has been spanked too many times with a warm lettuce leaf to care about that kind of word salad ...

And the pond had absolutely no time for this yarn, as it didn't seem to feature a saucy novel with a sexy pulse ...

EXCLUSIVE
ICJ gags former top judge’s verdict on its green overreach
Top Australian judge Ian Callinan blasts world court for wading into climate change policy
The International Court of Justice invited a former High Court judge to write an essay for its 80th anniversary – then tried to suppress his criticisms of the court.
By Paul Garvey

Is it too reflexive to wonder why a "top judge" - the reptiles new way of saying "top loon" - has himself waded into climate change policy, if only to berate the ICJ for allegedly wading into climate change? 

In reality, it's just a way of drawing attention to the IPA, a reminder that most days the lizard Oz is an IPA publicity machine...

On what basis did the not so learned judge decide that the ICJ's opinion on climate change was unpersuasive? 

Is he an expert on climate science as well as a zinger of a racy novelist?

...by all accounts Chief Justice Murray Gleeson had barristers in fits at a dinner at the Brisbane Club to mark the retirement of Ian Callinan. Reading selected quotes from the works of the former Brisbane judge, Gleeson lingered on the more racy sections of the books. Likening these accounts of sex as akin to an old movie in which the act was not fully depicted but represented by a shot of the male fast asleep, Gleeson remarked that Callinan's interpretation of sleeping with a woman "meant exactly that - going to sleep". (AFR)

So that's how the pond should be training to become a top notch climate scientist!

Of course the whiner had many other whinges, but typically the reptiles treasured the climate change angle, because nothing's wrong with the world right now ...

All that clearing of the decks kept the pond wide-eyed awake, and left room for the most treasured Tuesday moment of all for Dame Groan cultists ... a serve of her groaning ...

The header: Tomago more proof Anthony Albanese backs politics over good policy; Faulty energy policy has cost taxpayers $2.5bn to save the very industry it helped cripple, as the Albanese government’s political calculus overrides economic reform.

The caption for the grinning fiend: Anthony Albanese visits Tomago Aluminium Smelter to announce a financial lifeline to the smelter for 10 more years. Picture: Thomas Lisson

This is a classic reptile ploy. Spend weeks, neigh months, neigh years, groaning about the lack of an industrial base in crucial areas relating to defence and security...

Remind us bromancer ...

...A related decline in deterrence comes from Western governments deciding not to spend the money to produce the military capabilities that deterrence requires. All around the Western world defence spending is in a fight to the death with social spending. Defence is losing. Governments and electorates are choosing limitless social expenditure on infinitely expandable personal needs over national security spending.
As a result, the conventional balance of forces, as well as the nuclear balance, is moving against the West.
Further, the West’s defence industry base is plainly inadequate, having been greatly reduced since the end of the Cold War, with much Western manufacturing relocated to China. Western powers are slowly rebuilding this industrial base, but the process is almost criminally slow. (from August 2024, in the archive)

... then send in the groaner to beat them up, as the get 'em coming and get 'em going strategy requires:

Good policy is good politics; it’s the principle Paul Keating followed during his reforming purple patch as treasurer. What is less understood is that constant communication and explanations were also essential ingredients.
Virtually all policies involve winners and losers. Unless the losers can be compensated in some way, including through an understanding of the benefits of a bigger economic pie, economic reform becomes very difficult.

The pond can still remember ancient times when the French clock fan, sometimes observed flying over Australia on his way to Paris, sent the reptiles into a frenzy, but now he's best seen as a golden age club with which to beat the current age of lead ... Treasurer Paul Keating abided by the principle that good policy is good politics.

With that warm up, it was on for young, old and the "we'll all be rooned" biddy ...

This message is totally lost on the Albanese government. Politics trumps every other consideration. Bad policy that leads to lower productivity, higher costs and a shrinking economic pie is tolerated if there are votes involved.
Last week, we learnt of the bailout of the Tomago aluminium smelter in the Hunter Valley. It is the biggest smelter in the country and uses a very large chunk of the electricity generated along the east coast. The estimated cost of the bailout is $2.5bn over a decade, with the contribution of the NSW government capped at $1.225bn. That’s clever on the part of Premier Chris Minns, but not so appealing for Australian taxpayers.
Aluminium is essentially congealed electricity, with between 30 and 40 per cent of Tomago’s costs being energy. The long-term contract the smelter previously secured guaranteed affordable electricity until 2028 when the agreement expires. The figures for a new power contract quoted to the owners – Rio Tinto is just one of the parties – would have necessitated the closure of the plant.
The global aluminium market has shown considerable volatility historically. Russia is a big producer, as is China. There are multiple smelters in China’s western region, with modern coal plants their principal source of energy.
Other countries that are consequential producers of aluminium include Iceland, Norway, Canada and, more recently, Indonesia. Some delays in the commissioning of new plants have led to relatively high aluminium prices in the past few years, with strong demand from a variety of sources, including electric vehicles and renewable energy.
The Prime Minister claims Tomago is an example of “strategic capability” as one reason for the bailout. But given that aluminium is produced by many of our strategic allies, it’s not clear that this rationale stacks up compared with some rare minerals, for example. There is also talk about new renewable energy projects going ahead because of the deal, but Tomago’s investment in these is trivial.
The real motive for the Tomago bailout is that the plant directly employs 1000 workers, with other jobs indirectly hanging off its continuation. (The figure of 5000 in total is a stretch but is quoted to emphasise the importance of the smelter and downplay the cost of the governments’ handout per job. At $2.5m per direct job, this intervention is very expensive.) It is also located in a politically sensitive part of Australia.
But the biggest irony of this announcement, which follows several other bailouts of similar smelters/refineries, is that faulty energy policy is the main reason for the rescue operation. Had Tomago been able to roll over the energy contract at similar prices, there would be no need for such hefty compensation.
But the headlong pursuit of decarbonisation and subsidisation of renewable energy have led to much higher electricity prices and a potential loss of reliability. (Aluminium smelters require 24/7 power, although they can power down to some extent.)
But there was Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen at the announcement of the bailout, seemingly unaware that his actions, in part, have led to taxpayers being tapped on the shoulder to save the plant.

Maestro, please, a snap of the hapless one, gesticulating and requiring Dame Groan's correction, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Dame Groan was quick to send the likes of the bromancer to the corner ...

Let’s be clear here that the bailout of Tomago is all about politics, not economics or geostrategic factors. It’s stretching the meaning of words to describe it as part of the Future Made in Australia project. A private sector company could easily have the regulatory authorities knocking on the door, accusing it of misleading advertising.
Then we come to the GST deal with Western Australia and the PM’s clear assurance that nothing would change, notwithstanding the release of the Productivity Commission’s draft report on the topic. Again, this is all about politics, not good policy. And in this case, the fault is bipartisan, with the special deal having been first introduced by a Coalition government led by Scott Morrison.
For many years, WA had been a recipient state under the arrangement known as horizontal fiscal equalisation. This century HFE has been applied to the revenue generated from the GST.
But the outstanding development of the resources industry in the west, as well as high commodity prices, turned the state from being a recipient state to being a donor one, meaning the relativity of its distribution – 100 is even – began to sink and could have been as low as in the 20s. It’s easy to see how the citizens of WA felt deeply annoyed.
Now there are several ways of dealing with this conundrum; some sort of short-term adjustment may have been in order. The truth is that the way in which HFE works in this country has several flaws, including the disincentive it creates for states to develop their own resources and for governments to operate as efficiently as possible. There are also some arbitrary exclusions from the calculation – for example, gambling revenue.
Other federations around the world run much less extreme versions of HFE, which in our case is designed to allow all states to provide services of similar standard to their citizens. In Canada, for instance, only a portion of the provinces’ mineral royalties are counted towards the calculation of HFE. This is one solution to our WA problem. In the US, the extent of HFE is much lower again. There is a simple acceptance of big differences in the standard of government provision between the states and the role interstate migration can play.
The point here is that rather than create an arbitrary baseline relativity figure for WA and top up all the other states so they are no worse off – that was the Morrison deal and continued thereafter – there are other, superior policy changes that could be implemented.
Bear in mind here that the fiscal cost is now around $60bn over a decade, a large multiple of what was originally expected. This is money the federal budget cannot really afford. Note also the current arrangement produces the bizarre outcome that WA receives 113 per cent of its assessed fiscal needs compared with just under 100 per cent for the other states.
It’s a clear case of politics trumping good policy, something that has become a hallmark of this government. WA is politically important, and Albanese has made it clear there will be no change to its special GST deal. There are better ways of dealing with the issue, but he is not interested.
The Keating principle that good policy is good politics has been totally forgotten.

Um, wasn't it a hallmark of the clap happy's government? 

And now the current government lacks the balls aka the wherewithal to do anything about it?

And as for the French clock devotee, you have to admire the way he's moved from this ...

... to becoming the old biddy's poster boy, bedecked with her good housekeeping seal of approval ...

And now time to close with the immortal Rowe heading off to the races ...

Credit where it's due ... this is what Faux Noise has produced ...