In which the ranga-loving Dame Slap and tedious "Ned" rule the reptile roost ...

 

There's one story you won't find featured in the lizard Oz this day ...

UN rights chief says uncovered remains in Gaza raise concerns of war crimes

GENEVA, Sept 15 (Reuters) - The recovery of hundreds of bodies from the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli strikes in Gaza ​during the war that began nearly three years ago has raised fresh concerns about possible war crimes, the U.N. human ‌rights chief said on Tuesday.
Volker Turk said the remains of what appeared to be entire families were being unearthed from sites destroyed during Israeli attacks, adding that many victims were women and children.

Not that those belated murmurings will produce a result ...

What you will find featured is the usual reptile carry on ... as Dame Slap valiantly attempted to provide some cover for the cavortings of Gina's pampered pet ...

The header: War against Pauline? It’s blundering Albo who Libs should attack; Angus Taylor must not allow himself, and the Coalition, to be distracted by Andrew Hastie’s personal beef with One Nation.

The caption for the banal set of co-joined snaps: Andrew Hastie and Pauline Hanson.

Some time ago the pond developed a set against Dame Slap. There's only so many transphobic litanies anyone should be asked to wear.

But her deep weirdness produces a moth to flame kind of attraction, and this day's effort was top notch.

As well as defending the ranga - just at the moment that the ranga felt compelled to do a couple of half-baked apologies of the "sorry, not really sorry" kind - Dame Slap decided to flame the pastie Hastie ...

Would the Liberals rather lose to Labor than One Nation? It’s a question worth posing after the past week in federal politics.
Indeed, the Liberal Party’s recent political brawls with One Nation raise several ancillary questions. First, why has it taken so long? Second, what is the best way to deflate One Nation without guaranteeing a Labor win? And finally, why is Andrew Hastie reaching for his Art of War manual now?
Third parties get a wind behind them when the wind has gone out of the establishment parties. Sadly, the Liberals are as much to blame for the re-emergence of One Nation as a political force in this country as the Albanese government and all the wacky progressive projects that drive ordinary voters to look for alternatives at the ballot box.
Had the Liberals long ago been hellbent on differentiating themselves from the governing party, Pauline Hanson’s party would have had no raison d’être. Instead, Hanson has stepped up because, for too long, the Liberals stepped aside.
Angus Taylor is a big improvement on recent former Liberal leaders. He’s economically literate and his disposition is authentically conservative. But when Liberals vacate the playing field for long periods, it takes some convincing for voters to take another look at them. And Taylor’s biggest problem is that he rarely commands the news cycle.

It wouldn't be a proper outing without a snap of the ranga and Tamworth's eternal shame ...Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce during a press conference in the Senate courtyard. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Perversity - a posture of ornery contrarianism - is the essence of what Dame Slap peddles, as can be seen in her assault on the pastie Hastie:

Last week, the contest was Andrew Hastie v Pauline Hanson. While some are piling plaudits on Hastie for going nuclear against Hanson, the reasons for his passion seem more about personal political advantage than about securing the national interest.
Hanson’s “Please Explain” episode first aired in late July. Given the dirt various Liberal politicians have dished up about Hanson over the years – including making a not insignificant contribution to Hanson being wrongly imprisoned – it’s a bit thin-skinned for Liberals to complain if Hanson gives as good as she gets.
However, for the sake of the argument, let’s say that Hastie is entitled to be upset at being called a “traitor” in the nine-minute parody. 

Roll that one around on your tongue. Heck, savour it, repeat it ...

...for the sake of the argument, let’s say that Hastie is entitled to be upset at being called a “traitor” in the nine-minute parody.

No doubt Dame Slap is accustomed to being called the bitch from hell, and therefore can't see anything wrong in calling a one-time soldier an actual traitor, but really?

What was it really about?

It was the weird devotion to defending an alleged war criminal ... per another place...

Hanson calling Hastie a traitor may have created her great nemesis

...An SAS veteran who served three tours in the Middle East, including two in Afghanistan, Hastie was among the 21 veterans compelled to testify in the 2022 Federal Court defamation trial brought by Ben Roberts-Smith. The Victoria Cross recipient had accused Nine newspapers of defaming him in reports that he had committed murder during deployments to Afghanistan.
In April this year, Roberts-Smith was arrested and charged with five counts of war crimes of murder. He vehemently denies the allegations.
Roberts-Smith is a hero to many in the nation’s west and has wealthy supporters. They include mining magnate Gina Rinehart, who also backs Pauline Hanson.
With the Liberals in turmoil earlier this year, Hastie, the MHR for the southern Perth seat of Canning, surfaced briefly as a leadership contender and One Nation enemy. Hanson declared a war of words on him and doubled down after her party’s unexpected state byelection win last month in Secret Harbour, which overlaps with Canning.
Hanson allowed a video to be posted on social media referring to Hastie as a “traitor” and “gutless maggot”, regarding his evidence against Roberts-Smith in the defamation trial.
Living up to Samuel Johnson’s aphorism that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, Hanson has refused to pull the offending post, saying it was satire. It also traduces Diggers and risks a battlefield behaviour standard that destroys military honour.

For Dame Slap it was merely a matter of cynical political ambition and of timing...

Sceptics are entitled to ask why it took five weeks for Hastie to express his profound disgust about this particular piece of political satire. What changed?
The Secret Harbour by-election is the critical intervening event. Last month, One Nation’s Luke Herdegen secured 57 per cent of the vote after preferences to win the party its first-ever lower house seat in the Western Australian parliament. Given the overlap between the Secret Harbour electorate and Hastie’s federal seat of Canning, it’s crystal clear that Hastie is fighting for his political life. In other words, Hastie v Hanson is about his personal survival.
If Hastie didn’t have this piece of political satire to use against Hanson, he would surely find something else. Fair enough. Politics is a tough gig, and Hanson is no stranger to political battles. Equally, the oversized hyperventilating by Hastie and others looks more like performance politics than conviction politics.

Note the attempt to brush it all off, the diminution of the abuse, as you might expect from a bitch from hell wondering what the fuss is all about, calling someone a maggot - a favourite word of Dame Slap's MAGA hero - and a traitor... but back to that other place ...

...Battle-hardened, Hastie drew a bead on Hanson: “Now I’m calling time on cowards who have never served a day in the Australian Defence Force attacking my service record, my integrity and my loyalty to Australia. I gave 12 years, eight months to the Australian Defence Force. I deployed twice on combat operations to Afghanistan. I left my wife at home, knowing that I might not return. And then to be called a traitor by One Nation … well, they’ve picked a fight with the wrong veteran.”
Hanson looks ridiculous. Even her star recruit, Barnaby Joyce, knew calling Hastie a traitor was beyond the pale. “Nothing to do with me, but I apologise.”

Even Tamworth's undying shame felt the need to apologise, but Dame Slap rallied around the ranga flag?

The pond trusts that correspondents realise how excruciating it is for the pond to side with the pastie Hastie in this affair, but that's the sort of result only a bitch from hell could produce.

At this point the reptiles featured an audio distraction, which strangely was just a link...

LISTEN NOW: Pauline Hanson’s smash-and-grab: is anyone handling it right?

... so the pond decided to promote something the pond will never listen to ...

The bouffant one? They've got the bouffant one on podcast duties? 

No wonder the pond will never listen, especially as the question should be about the way that the reptiles are handling the ranga. Is blaming the pastie Hastie for getting agitated about being called a maggot traitor the right way to go?

Back to Dame Slap braying at the pastie Hastie ...

Apart from helping him keep his own parliamentary salary, Hastie’s apparent strategy of fighting One Nation first is likely to have another objective. He’s trying to convince his colleagues he has the cut-through and media presence to take the Liberal leadership from Taylor.
Many will have noticed that when Hastie was asked about leadership aspirations during his fiery press conference last week, he said that Taylor is “the leader right now”.
Hastie’s existential fight with One Nation therefore seems to have several potential advantages for him personally. What if Hastie’s personal interests conflict with the Liberals’ collective interests, and indeed with the electoral interests of all those desperately unhappy with the current government?
Hastie’s “fight One Nation first” strategy may simply mean that across the country the Liberals are seen as fighting the wrong enemy. What if Hastie’s efforts to win his own seat help force Taylor to pursue a “fight One Nation first” strategy – if only to fend off a Hastie challenge?
There is a legitimate fear among many who want a change of government that Hastie, and indeed Liberal “moderates” generally, hate One Nation much more than the ALP.
The fracturing of votes on the political right has led to an explosion of passions not dissimilar in some ways to intense animosities between factions within political parties. When there is a fracturing, voters will look elsewhere.
Taylor must not allow himself, and the Coalition, to be distracted by Hastie’s personal beef with One Nation. The alternative prime minister should be out every day, at every opportunity, labelling Albanese the worst kind of thief. The Prime Minister is no Robin Hood.

It's just a personal beef? What a mad anarchist, nihilist approach. What happened to Dumas and the notion, "All for one and one for all, united we stand, divided we fall"

Just to rub it in ...Screengrab of a cartoon One Nation’s Pauline Hanson posted about WA Liberal Andrew Hastie. Picture: YouTube

That left room for a brief assault on Albo's mob...

He and his government are stealing from every Australian whose house value has tumbled. He’s stealing from current and future Australians by spending too much, taxing too much, racking up record levels of debt, and overseeing the worst productivity falls since records were kept in the 1960s.
If the Coalition and One Nation can’t come to some sensible, mutually beneficial preference deal, Albanese will likely remain in The Lodge and Jim Chalmers will continue to dish up new taxes. That would be diabolical for the country. This government is so ideological in its class war policies that it loathes the rich more than it loves the poor.

But it was brief, because Dame Slap was really more into Pauline than all that jazz.

After all that came a classic billy goat butt ...

No veteran who serves this country deserves to be labelled a traitor for giving truthful evidence under oath. 

D'oh. Might that have been better appearing at the start?

But that hilariously noted, when Dame Slap says that, it's only so it can be undercut by a "that said", a subtle kind of billy goat butt ...

That said, when Hastie postured in parliament with his copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, he invited mockery. Perhaps he missed the section on avoiding own goals.
It’s understood that since the member for Canning’s declaration of war against One Nation, Hanson’s Please Explain clip has attracted almost a quarter of a million new views. As political satire goes, the cartoon is a compelling insight into the travails of the modern Liberal Party after John Howard left office.

A compelling insight?

Such a mean, vindictive, nasty woman. Yes, Pauline, but also ..

No wonder some label her the lizard Oz bitch from hell ...

The pond supposes that at this point it should note a few of the reptiles it has sent to the intermittent archive.

The craven Craven was out and about, delivering a standard serve of white piety and hypocrisy ...

COMMENTARY by GREG CRAVEN
Who will protect the Indigenous children of Frisby Court?
Pauline Hanson’s words were rightly condemned. But where is the same level of outrage in the name of the murdered Hawke children or the other vulnerable kids of Frisby Court?

There are any number of stories about outrages perpetrated in all parts of the community, but the reptiles only ever go all in when the outrage offers a chance for some black bashing.

Lydia Lynch decided on a lynching of Crisafulli ...

Labor’s debt disaster is now Crisafulli’s choice
David Crisafulli’s borrowing binge makes Queensland’s debt crisis an LNP choice
The Liberal National Party in Queensland has abandoned its long-held fiscal principle that governments should live within their means.
By Lydia Lynch
Queensland Bureau Chief

Sorry, the pond knows that some correspondents live in the deep north, but really? Yawn ...

Anthony continued this tour of the provinces ...

We’re learning what Carroll is against … but what is he for?
Can Ben Carroll save Labor by repudiating his own government?
Ben Carroll has made clear what he is against: the record of his own government. Now he must show Victorians what he is for.
By Anthony Galloway
Victorian political editor

Just a two minute read Anthony? The deep south wars are really slowing down.

And with AI all the go at the moment, the reptiles offered a tepid 3 minute look ...

Why AI may be too big not to fail
The industry may find that the only road to its prosperity runs through a crisis.
By David Roche

The closing par just about summarised the bland insipidness on view ...

...The scale of the AI build-out is not a reason for optimism or pessimism. It raises the stakes on the outcome. A technology this large, financed this aggressively, and this tightly woven into portfolios, credit markets and corporate strategy, leaves little room for a soft landing, if the underlying economics do not hold. The world may still get to the good ending, where AI lifts productivity broadly and prosperity spreads. But the more likely route there runs through a crisis.

Sheesh, the pond only went there so it could turn to the immortal Rowe for a Vomisa chuckle ...

It also provided a chance to segue to the cracking Crace's take...

AI on course to kill us all within 10 years? Donald Trump says: ‘Hold my Coke’

We can all sleep easy. In a post on his Truth Social account, Donald Trump has declared that fears over artificial intelligence were all a hoax dreamed up by conspiracy theorists. Obviously that includes the top bods at Anthropic and its competitors, who all called for a coordinated global slowdown while the industry works out how to mitigate the risks. Still, good to know the tech bros are just fantasists and space cadets at heart.
All that was needed to keep humanity safe and well, The Donald insisted, was a president with a very high IQ. Someone very like him. The only man alive who could out-think the combined power of the world’s supercomputers. He could tell them where to draw the line and they would reprogram themselves to back off. Inside every AI network is a default off switch that kneels before the US president. Trump can rewire the world with the power of his mind.
You can see why so many people working in the industry believe there is a chance AI will wipe out humanity within a decade. Even a halfway intelligent network would probably reckon it was doing us all a favour. A world that can elect Trump as president is so messed up it deserves to be put out of its misery. AI is just terribly sorry that it can’t promise to do it any sooner than 10 years. But it will do its best.
Perhaps the question we should really be asking about The Donald is whether he would actually pass the Turing test. Less AI, more artificial stupidity. Put him in a closed room with the world’s worst chatbot and it would be hard to tell the difference.
Trump can imitate speech but he can’t get anywhere near intelligence. Just endless repetitions, changes of subject and a desperate need to score points. All of which would be easily programmable by a first-year undergraduate computer science student. Maybe it’s a race to the death. Humanity hellbent on killing itself before AI gets the chance to do it for us.

That's more like it, cheerfulness in the face of adversity and disaster. A bit like Tottenham Hotspur.

That's got to be worth an infallible Pope ...

Much as the pond would have liked to dally with these sirens, the pond had no choice. 

The pond is contractually required to climb the "Ned" Everest whenever it appears, shimmering on the horizon ...

Just look at the beguiling splash, conforming to the reptile rule of rehashing comical snaps of Albo and Jimbo ...

Even better, the reptiles livened up the actual yarn with a fresh comical take on the Jimbo rule ...

The header: Has Labor misjudged the political times? Labor prides itself as the party that shapes Australia’s future but the conundrum it confronts is whether it has misread the intellectual and policy responses Australia now demands.

The caption for Emilia's artwork, as she proudly continued the reptile tradition of visually traducing Albo and Jimbo: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, productivity commission chair Danielle Wood and Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Artwork by Emilia Tortorella.

"Ned" managed to keep this climb to a base camp five minutes, and what a soporific effort it was.

As usual, "Ned" spent most of his time accumulating the thoughts of others ... and also as usual, he managed to assemble a set of ancient warriors...

Summer grass —
all that remains
of warriors' dreams.

It says a lot about "Ned", especially as he tries to suggest that there were many alternatives, many others could have been chosen for this column.

But they weren't and instead there's a musty tediousness, a sense of old warrior syndrome, with one aged warrior carefully tending to other warrior mushrooms eager to stay in the limelight ...

The pivotal policy issue in the fifth year of the Labor government is whether its central economic direction and philosophy is failing Australia, with systemic criticisms mounting from different quarters – witness Kevin Rudd, Danielle Wood, Bill Kelty and Mathias Cormann.
Policy debate today is defined by an unusual phenomenon – a diverse group of prominent Australians and institutions warning the nation is on the wrong track but contradicted by a stubborn government that, marginal adjustments aside, rejects the notion of “danger, wrong way”.
The issue at stake is fundamental for the Labor Party and for the nation. Labor prides itself as the party that shapes Australia’s future but the conundrum it confronts is whether Labor has misread the intellectual and policy responses Australia now demands. Has Labor misconstrued the times in which it governs?
There is nothing exclusive about the abovementioned four people, and many others could have been chosen for this column. But they are conspicuous for their different positions and sympathies, the strength of their warnings and the sense, explicit or implied, that a radical revamp is essential. The critique of Labor is evidence-based, widely held and mounting. Yet there is no sign that Labor accepts the validity or the political realism in much of these critiques – pointing to a prolonged, deeper conflict.

Of all the narcissists on the planet, why pick former chairman Rudd? Kevin Rudd speaks at the National Press Cub in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

He was clueless in power and much despised, feared and loathed by the reptiles back in the day, so what makes him such an attraction for the hive mind now?

In his recent National Press Club speech, titled “The Complacent Country”, Rudd identified the “deep systemic forces” being unleashed across the world, and said: “We are now on borrowed time. As a people, we have become so risk-averse that we fail to comprehend that the even greater risk is standing still and trying in vain to preserve the status quo.”
The point is obvious: the status quo is finished. Identifying three epic challenges – the rise of China, the AI revolution and accelerating climate change – Rudd said these mega-changes were “unprecedented in modern history”. The logic was obvious: “Incrementalism will no longer work for Australia. Urgency must be our national watchword if we are to navigate our future as an independent, prosperous and resilient nation.”
Unsurprisingly, Rudd said the Albanese government was “working across” all three fronts. But he lamented the failure of the “national body politic” that had yet to come to grips with the “national urgency” needed.
Rudd said Australia must become an AI power in our own right, that the US alliance was a “force multiplier” and AUKUS was essential for our hi-tech future, that an expanding defence budget had to be linked to the new regional security treaties Labor had negotiated, and, above all, that Australia must build economic resilience through an interventionist industry policy with industry “tsars” in charge of the seven sectors Rudd identified, which include AI, biotechnology, critical minerals, renewable energy, defence industry and finance, building upon the super funds.
It is a reminder of Rudd as a government-driven programmer. Many will disagree with his proposals since Rudd essentially wants Labor to display more ambition on the existing Albanese agenda – yet few would dispute his diagnosis of Australia mired in complacency and resistant to bold action. The message: Labor must do far better by seeking to transform the nation’s mindset.

Why must the reptiles always blather on about the need to transform the nation's mindset, and shout at clouds about being mired in complacency and resistant to bold action?

What's wrong with enjoying life instead of being chained to a Murdochian machine? Productivity Commission chair Danielle Wood appears at the Supplementary Budget Estimates. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
  And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
  Among the river sallows, borne aloft
    Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
  Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
  The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Sorry, the pond doesn't know where that came from ... back to the trudge ...

In her public comments over the past 18 months, the Labor-appointed chair of the Productivity Commission, Danielle Wood, has consistently warned that politicians have downgraded economic growth as an objective. It is a devastating conclusion, revealing how politics has corrupted good policy and the public interest.
In her speeches over 2025 and 2026, Wood, while welcoming Jim Chalmers’ emphasis on productivity, said a “growth mindset” had been “missing from Australian policy for far too long”. The upshot was the threat to the “generational bargain” where “young people today believe they won’t live better lives than their parents did” – a conclusion verified by the facts.
At heart, this was “a productivity challenge” because only productivity over time could sustainably lift real wages. The problem across many rich nations, including Australia, was “a declining reform appetite” and this was most apparent than in the “ballooning” burden of regulation.
A survey of company directors found boards were spending 55 per cent of their time on regulatory compliance when fresh investment was essential for productivity growth. Opening a cafe in Brisbane took 31 separate steps, while the nation now built half as much house per hour worked as we did 30 years ago.
Wood said that since 2015 average annual productivity growth had been a quarter of its long-run average. Governments were doing “less major reform than in previous decades”, the economy was less dynamic and there was a structural increase in demand for non-market services. The PC reported that June 2026 figures showed productivity growth was stagnant, while over the year to June there was a 0.2 per cent decline in labour productivity.
While Labor talks up productivity, these dismal results point to a chilling coming year – a weak growth economy, imprisoned by inflation, with declining living standards and an extended cost-of-living crisis. The message: the policy settings aren’t working.

Then came another ancient, deeply irrelevant warrior, shouting at clouds above the hilly bourn ... Bill Kelty

Apparently in "Ned's" eyes, he's some kind of lethal warrior ... from the 1980s ... which to be fair is a few decades on from blathering about the 1950s under Ming the Merciless ...

The most lethal commentary comes from former union chief Bill Kelty, a prominent figure in the 1980s reform era but now alarmed at the results from the current Labor model. In a recent interview with the Nine Network papers, Kelty intensified his critique of the government’s housing policy saying interest rates are rising and real wages had fallen by 5 per cent since 2021 under OECD figures.
He attacked statements by the Treasurer that workers’ share of GDP was at a high point, saying: “It’s just ridiculous and people get offended by it. They can’t pay the bills and you tell them your share of GDP is growing. Don’t insult me: that’s what they are saying. Build more housing and increase real wages, please.”
Many of Kelty’s views are aligned with Paul Keating, and they have both attacked Labor’s broader strategic failures on tax, notably the high rates of personal income tax, calling for the top rate to be cut below 40 per cent to restore personal incentive partly financed by higher taxes on capital and property.
The message: Albanese Labor risks misunderstanding how the world is actually changing and the enduring relevance of personal incentive, capital investment and government prudence.
Finally, in a recent intervention former Liberal finance minister Mathias Cormann, now OECD secretary-general, warned in a Perth speech of “worrying signs of a quiet drift back toward the instincts Australia once had the courage to abandon”. The demon he identified was a “new protectionism” – not the old tariff wall but industry subsidies, local content rules, procurement preferences, labour market re-regulation and regulations that slow investment.

And then came the worst of the lot of them ... Mathias Cormann attends the opening session of the Delphi Economic Forum. Picture: NurPhoto

Whenever the pond sees that smug mug, it's drawn back in time ...

On Friday, Channel Nine aired images of Mr Hockey and Mr Cormann lighting up cigars - widely considered symbols of power and success - only days before the government is expected to deliver a tough federal budget that could include cuts to welfare and a rise in the fuel excise. (SMH)

And so to final dire portents of doom...

Each step sounded “plausible” but “collectively they recreate the exact logic of the old system” – this was the system from which Australia escaped during the Hawke-Keating-Howard-Costello era. Cormann warned that it was folly for a mid-sized nation to look backwards “while its productivity engine idles” – this being a recipe for “slow relative decline”. The danger for Australia was a retreat to nostalgia when it needed renewal. He argued that the reform age that turned Australia into a global success and prosperity story was a function of economic reform, institutional strength and the rule of law.

On the other hand, it could be worse ...

Apparently only perfection will satisfy "Ned", in which case the pond anticipates his resignation from the deeply imperfect lizard Oz within the week ...

Cormann’s warning is the most ominous – guaranteed to earn Labor’s contempt – with its implication that the current Labor government might have misread the drivers of economic success in the 2020s and, even worse, forgotten the lesson of its own proud history.
Sure, warnings are easy, solutions are hard. But smart governments read the times right. Being half-right won’t cut it.

And speaking of the fully wrong, doubtless many will have already read the ProPublica yarn ...

Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to Putin

The oligarch, Umar Kremlev, spent hundreds of thousands on expenses like renting out a private island. He appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, but he attended the intimate wedding with a large group of other Russian guests.

That's the piquant sauce for this tasty cartoon serve ...

And speaking of AI and the mad king ...