Polonius discovering the ABC is a conservative free zone? The dog botherer suffused with smugness? Dame Slap proud to be a mum? Garrulous Gemma impersonating a cheese grater? All the fun of the lizard Oz circus ...

 

The pond gets depressed at the monotonous regularity of the Australian Daily Zionist News portion of the lizard Oz, all the more so because prattling Polonius seems determined to become one of its main contributors.

What once was a regular Sunday lark in the park has now become a tedious chore ...

The header: By Gerard Henderson
Sydney University vice-chancellor Mark Scott has failed to fight antisemitism

The yearning for a bot reader: Listen to this article
6 min

The caption for the snap of a man looking downcast at the thought crime of having agitated Polonius: Mark Scott, vice-chancellor and president of the University of Sydney. Picture: NewsWire / Josie Hayden

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The pond only went there because it allowed the pond to do its usual and detour to a Haaretz story ... but first a little of the moaning and whining, and a warning - full disrespect Sharri will make an appearance. 

The term failing upwards appears to have become something of a cliche of late. Even so, it is rare indeed that any successful and well-remunerated individual acknow­ledges that they have failed.
Enter Mark Scott, who earns more than $1m a year as the vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney. He is a former head of the NSW Department of Education, a former managing director and editor-in-chief of the ABC and a former director of John Fairfax Holdings Limited, sometimes referred to as Fairfax Media (but no longer with us).
It is a matter of record that antisemitism was rife on Australian university campuses after the Hamas terrorist attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, that led to Israel’s defensive war in Gaza. At some universities Jewish students were abused and intimidated, invariably by supporters of radical Islam and the radical left who set up encampments on university campuses. It’s a dangerous unity ticket.
The report of the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, headed by Virginia Bell, will be handed down in late December. Its findings and recommendations are awaited with interest. But already Scott has acknowledged that he failed to address antisemitism on the campus he is paid to manage.
Appearing before a Senate inquiry on September 20, 2024, Coalition senator Sarah Henderson put it to Professor Scott (as he has become) that he had failed Jewish students and staff at the university. Scott replied: “Yes I have failed them and the university has failed them and that’s why we’ve made significant changes to our policy settings.”
It’s not clear what Scott meant by saying he had failed Jewish students and Sydney University had failed them as well. After all, he is the vice-chancellor and, as such, in charge of the university’s policies and practices. It might be expected that someone in a very senior position in a university who admitted to having failed with respect to the health and safety of staff and students would offer their resignation. Not Scott who, as reported on these pages on May 31, 2025, received a pay increase of $150,000. Just as well for the taxpayer-subsidised university that he did not regard himself succeeding in his role.
Scott used the F-word again when he appeared before the royal commission on July 15 this year. He also conceded, as he had at the Senate hearing, that he had negotiated the removal of the encampment with the Sydney University Muslim Students Association without consulting Jewish students or staff.

All this from a pompous pedant, done in a way that makes Polonius seem in the grip of an unhealthy jealousy, what with him seeming to have spent his career failing downwards.

Then came Sharri: News24 host Sharri Markson and Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin pictured at Bondi. Picture: Rohan Kelly

Okay, enough of that, it's time for the pond to detour off into a Haaretz story.

Herzog, Elor Azaria and NAZA: Today's Israel Openly Applauds War Crimes
President Herzog's pardoning of Elor Azaria is hardly a surprise to anyone who has been watching the Israeli public's response to extrajudicial and vigilante killings of Palestinians, which continue to be carried out and captured on film
Dahlia Scheindlin. (*intermittent archive link)

There's an idiomatic Hebrew phrase, "we've been in this film before" – close to the English expression "we've been here before," or we know what this situation means.
The phrase is the best way to capture the meaning of President Isaac Herzog's surprise pardon of Elor Azaria on the eve of Yom Kippur. Azaria was convicted of manslaughter in 2017 by an Israeli military court for executing a wounded Palestinian attacker point-blank, long after soldiers had shot and fully incapacitated the man.
It is particularly ironic to process this pardoning of a soldier who killed a wounded man in light of the sweeping fury in Israel over the film "NAZA." For two weeks, Israelis have emitted hellfire commentary, threatened unprecedented de-patriating and death against the filmmakers of the documentary that reveals alleged IDF war crimes in Gaza.
And yet when faced with another kind of film about what should have been viewed as a war crime, Israelis never even suggested that the incident was a lie, a fabrication or a blood libel, as per relentless accusations against "NAZA."
There was no denial at all of what Azaria had done – only a full-throated embrace that lasted not 25 minutes like the applause for "NAZA" at the Venice Film Festival, but 10 long years, a crescendo ending with the presidential pardon.

There's just time for a screen cap to show off the hero ...

Well you won't be reading any of that any time soon in the lizard Oz ...

Time to get back to Polonius and - dread thought - to Sharri ...

And he promised SUMSA the university would review its investment policies with respect to defence contracts, with Israel as the obvious target. At the royal commission, Scott said he now regretted this as well. In this regard he has become an apology expert.
Last Wednesday, Sharri Markson and Alex Ryvchin addressed The Sydney Institute on the occasion of the publication of their book Bondi Terror: The Tragedy, The Courage, The Aftermath (HarperCollins). Markson referred to the Globalise the Intifada group, which this week ran in the election for the Students Representative Council at Sydney University. The university’s administration clearly did nothing to prevent this. The decision had been criticised by the Chris Minns Labor government and the Kellie Sloane-led opposition in NSW.
I was in Israel during the time of the first intifada; it was a violent terrorist attack on Israeli society. The second intifada was even more violent. Markson made it clear that the term “globalise the intifada” was not a political expression and easily could be interpreted as a call to violence against Australians. She reported last Tuesday on her News24 Sharri program that she had drawn Scott’s attention to this. And that the university came back and said it was concerned and that everyone had a right to psychosocial safety – whatever that might mean. But nothing was done.
For his part, Ryvchin reported that the previous week at Sydney University, Jewish students who had obtained permission to operate a small stall to mark the Jewish New Year were relocated by campus security to a remote part of the campus for their protection. Why? In Ryvchin’s own words: “Globalise the Intifada activists were scheduled to be in the same area.” He added: “Again the peaceful were displaced to accommodate the violent.”

At this point the reptiles decided on a book promotion, and the pond decided only a screen cap would show off the naked positioning ... Bondi Terror: The tragedy, the courage, the aftermath by Sharri Markson and Alex Ryvchin

Okay, enough of that prose, glittering with preening smugness and condescension ...how about another chunk of that Haaretz story?

...Netanyahu, ever the weathervane, at first gave anodyne statements about the need to protect IDF values, but quickly shifted to open support for the soldier. On the day Azaria was convicted, Netanyahu announced his support for a pardon; perhaps not coincidentally, a poll by Channel 2 (today Channel 12) that same day found that two-thirds of Israelis supported such a pardon. By later that year, then-Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who had replaced Ya'alon, also asked then-President Reuven Rivlin for a pardon.
The military court had sentenced Azaria to 18 months in prison; then-Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot reduced it to 14 months, and in the end, he was released after just nine months in jail. To this day, he has expressed no regret for his actions, and the IDF therefore recommended as recently as July that he not be pardoned.
Israeli observers, such as Haaretz's Amira Hass, noted back in 2017 that it was only the film that put the incident on the public agenda. Numerous similar acts that were not filmed demonstrated a clear practice of shooting to kill any perpetrator, or even suspect – including before he or she perpetrated any act at all.
Netanyahu, ever the weathervane, at first gave anodyne statements about the need to protect IDF values, but quickly shifted to open support for the soldier. On the day Azaria was convicted, Netanyahu announced his support for a pardon; perhaps not coincidentally, a poll by Channel 2 (today Channel 12) that same day found that two-thirds of Israelis supported such a pardon. By later that year, then-Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who had replaced Ya'alon, also asked then-President Reuven Rivlin for a pardon.
The military court had sentenced Azaria to 18 months in prison; then-Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot reduced it to 14 months, and in the end, he was released after just nine months in jail. To this day, he has expressed no regret for his actions, and the IDF therefore recommended as recently as July that he not be pardoned.
Israeli observers, such as Haaretz's Amira Hass, noted back in 2017 that it was only the film that put the incident on the public agenda. Numerous similar acts that were not filmed demonstrated a clear practice of shooting to kill any perpetrator, or even suspect – including before he or she perpetrated any act at all.
In other words, being pardoned by the president of Israel is shocking but not surprising. Anyone who was nevertheless shocked that Herzog, a longtime politician from the Labor Party, was the one to do it has been quickly reminded over the last few days that it runs in the family.
In 1986, his father Chaim Herzog, Israel's sixth president, approved the unusual preemptive pardon for the Shin Bet agents who not only killed Palestinian bus hijackers after they were captured and bound, but who also participated in an elaborate cover-up in which the agents framed Israel's own military forces, lying shamelessly to their own investigating authorities.
Herzog pardoned them before they even stood trial – just as he pardoned or commuted sentences of Jewish civilian terrorists during his term, following their convictions. In the Bus 300 affair, the Supreme Court backed the preemptive pardons for the Shin Bet agents, such that they never even stood trial.
The current pardon of Elor Azaria is the latest evidence that Israeli society has long become not only inured but supportive of crimes against Palestinians. Two days ago, a Palestinian killed an Israeli settler on the eve of Yom Kippur at a West Bank spring. At his funeral, settler leader Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria regional council, called to "drain the entire swamp, not just to chase after the mosquito." The language about killing all the mosquitos has been used by Bezalel Smotrich at least as far back as 2018, when I first noticed it.
Dagan went on to advocate for a huge military operation against West Bank Palestinians. When that happens, we'll have more "NAZA" films about the collateral damage that looks very not unintended – and more indifference, accusations of lies or outright support.
I almost held back about "NAZA," since like most Israelis, I haven't seen it. For over a week, the fact that the film hasn't been released in Israel, even for private viewing by journalists, has grated on my sensibilities. Israel's response has been vicious, but it's also unfair that the public hasn't been given the chance to see it and react substantively.
Then I realized that we don't need a new and mysterious documentary to know how Israelis will react to films about the war crimes our country is committing. We've got plenty of such films already.

That distraction almost made Polonius's whining - a double coup for him, the ABC and Zionism - bearable... until the pond came upon those immortal words ...  ABC’s lack of viewpoint diversity, which made it a conservative-free zone ...

Read them in context and weep.

That old bumblebee is still buzzing around in the old Polonial noggin ...

At the ABC, the government appoints the board (except for the staff representative) and the board selects the managing director. I had discussions with Scott about the ABC’s lack of viewpoint diversity, which made it a conservative-free zone, before he took up the position and he seemed interested. Indeed, Scott suggested that he deliver his first speech as ABC managing director to The Sydney Institute. He did so in October 2006 and gave the impression that he wanted to reform the ABC.
But, alas, his reform drive did not last and he was soon caught up in the fashionable left culture that pervades the ABC and went into denial about its faults. When Scott left the ABC in 2016 it was in worse condition than when he arrived in so far as viewpoint diversity was concerned.
In short, Scott was too weak – read too nice – to reform the institution. And he keeps failing to ensure that Sydney University is a safe place for Jewish and non-Jewish Australians who support Israel’s right to exist within secure borders.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

As for the rights of Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese people? Go whistle Dixie ...or perhaps read the Haaretz email that regularly lands in the pond's in-tray ...

And so to the dog botherer doing a fairly standard lizard Oz hit job ...

The header: Albanese’s week in Manhattan said everything about Labor’s priorities
By Chris Kenny Associate Editor

The offer of a bot voice: Listen to this article

The caption for the snap which proposed that the dog botherer was a student of literature: A few hours in Manhattan and Anthony Albanese had gone all Bonfire of the Vanities on us.

The plea to ignore the paywall and go full logarithm: Make us preferred on Google

The comedy here is the dog botherer's blather about "smug". 

It's the sort of epithet he tosses out all the time.

Look up the dog botherer, and you can see him saying "Jim Chalmers seems to be incredibly smug" or saying "Bowen seems to smug about it", or Jimbo again, "as for the treasurer he remains smug", and so on and on.

It is of course projection.

He himself is incredibly smug, as he acknowledged in a reptile story back in 2017 ...

Perhaps I could assist the court, your honour?” Frankly, it was fun just hearing the words come out of my mouth. I had to suppress a smug smile that would betray how much fun I was having — this, after all, was serious. (sorry, the intermittent archive is still being spoofed by the reptiles)

Assorted images of the dog botherer ooze smugness.That slightly curled lip, that self-satisfied air of a made man ...

Is that a smug smirk, or a smirk trying to hide the smug?

And so "smug" is the angle du jour...

It is the smug indifference that gets me. It has been palpable from Anthony Albanese all the way from the banks of New York City’s East River, and back in Australia from Jim Chalmers as he published a report predicting four decades of budget deficits.
Confronted on Monday in the Big Apple with the shocking revelations from this newspaper about abuse and neglect of Indigenous children in Western Australia’s Pilbara, the Prime Minister was indignant. “Well, this is a Western Australian issue, and, you know, I will refer you once again to Malarndirri McCarthy, our minister in Australia,” said Albanese. “It is impossible to follow, on an hour-by-hour basis, what is happening in Australia from New York.”
A few hours in Manhattan and Albanese had gone all Bonfire of the Vanities on us. He was a “master of the universe” and should not be bothered about children back home.
Meanwhile in the Antipodes the Treasurer had released the latest intergenerational report, revealing the dismal reality that the federal budget is on track to remain in deficit over the next four decades – another 40 years or more of governments spending more than they raise. Yet in response to a media question Chalmers said “every page of this IGR in one way or another justifies, validates and I hope one day vindicates the difficult decisions that we’ve taken reforming the housing market and reforming the tax system.”
Even Donald Trump would struggle to summon the chutzpah of this pair. Indeed, this is the week that Albanese, who once said Trump “scared the shit” out of him because he tried to run politics through social media posts, sidled up to the US President for a selfie that he posted to social media.
Nothing undercuts criticism like imitation. Soon Albanese will trump Trump and start referring to AI as super-duper intelligence.

The reptiles slipped in an AV distraction featuring the distinctly short of intelligence Caleb ...

Next video thumbnail
Trump has decided to rename AI to ‘super intelligence’
News24 host Caleb Bond reacts to US President Donald Trump renaming AI “super intelligence” during his address at the United Nations General Assembly.

The dog botherer kept on pounding away ...

Back in Canberra, Chalmers was telling the little people he had big plans for them: “I want more Australians to be beneficiaries of change, and as the pace of that change picks up, so does the pace of our intergenerational obligations.” What a relief, I was worried this government was too busy saving the planet to deliver us into the vanguard of intergenerational prosperity.

See the smugness? Climate science is just a "save the planet" smug Superman joke.

You have to be incredibly smug to think that climate science is a laughing matter ...while others have seen the eternal Footman hold their coat and snicker, and in short were afraid.

If you're smug and self-satisfied - a crow eater way of life - you don't need fear.

When Albanese revealed an unprecedented AI hacking of federal government computer systems, he was asked for a message to concerned Australians and he refused to let this failure undercut his conceit: “The Australian government’s got your back.”
As the wise New York cabbie told Elaine Benes in Seinfeld: “Smugness is not a good quality.” Back in the day, Labor deployed the term aggressively against Peter Costello. In 2004 Labor frontbencher Stephen Smith said Costello was unpopular because of his “smugness” and “arrogance”. Whether or not that was fair, Costello was a treasurer with much to be smug about; Chalmers’ and Albanese’s smugness seems rooted in delusion. The cost-of-living crunch continues and is about to be made worse when the Reserve Bank board meets next week and is almost certain to continue its fight against “sticky” inflation by increasing interest rates again.
As David Koch wrote in an open letter to RBA governor Michele Bullock this week, a large part of the inflation problem is being generated by government spending (federal, state and local) but it is mortgage holders and small business owners who wear the pain.

And there's something insufferably smug and pretentious about giving Elaine her full name ...(why not Elaine Marie Benes if you want to sound even more silly?) ...Elaine Benes from Seinfeld always said ‘Smugness is not a good quality.’ Picture: Getty Images;Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ smugness seems rooted in delusion. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

 

Whatever it might be, that isn't a smug look on Jimbo's clock. The downward drop of the clenched shut mouth suggest he's just caught a whiff of the dog botherer in the neighbourhood. 

The pond threw in an extra snap as a compare and contrast, to show that it's the dog botherer that truly rooly knows how to do smug ...

As with all smug reptiles, at some point the whining always turns into a litany ...and if you expect to read "virtue signalling", scribbled by a smug pundit signalling his virtuous refusal to be a virtue signalling, you've come to the right place:

Electricity prices continue to move in the opposite direction to Labor’s promises as a direct result of its net-zero obsession and record immigration exacerbates a housing crisis that in turn has been made worse by the broken promises in Chalmers’ budget. Productivity is in retreat, government debt is at record levels, investors are looking elsewhere, we are experiencing deeper social unrest than we have seen in generations and have just experienced the worst terror attack in the nation’s history. Yet Albanese spent a full week away in the US, even though his Foreign Minister Penny Wong was there too. He accepted a “global citizen” award, embraced Volodymyr Zelensky, walked with Andy Burnham and hugged Emmanuel Macron like an old school buddy. It was an indulgent week, personally and politically.
Albanese went to the US early enough to be the main guest for the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday, obviously an arrangement made long in advance with the ABC which conveniently focused on the AI issues the PM wanted to highlight. His meeting with Apple in California was a time filler and there was not a single meeting in New York that justified the trip – he was there to gladhand and announce his government’s bid for a UN Security Council seat.
Everything that makes the UN ineffectual and counter-productive – its virtue signalling, its bureaucracy, its penchant for words over action, its aspiration towards world governance, its refusal to distinguish between democracies and dictatorships, its chippiness about the US and its obsession with Israel as the root of all evil – is what Socialist Left politicians such as Albanese and Wong love about it. They revel in the bureaucrat-filled corridors and meaningless platitudes that smart politicians should abhor.

The reptiles provided another AV distraction, this one featuring admirable support for Ukraine over Vlad the sociopath:

Next video thumbnail
‘My friend’: Albanese and Zelensky sign security pact on UN sidelines
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have signed a new security agreement on the sidelines of the United Nations. The federal government is committing $60 million in military, energy, and humanitarian aid, taking Australia’s total support to almost $1.9 billion. Mr Albanese became visibly emotional when describing his admiration for Mr Zelensky’s leadership throughout the war against Russia.

Did any of that interfere with the dog botherer's insufferable inclination to smugness? Of course not.

He simply went about his business of preparing a litany of fodder to feed the chooks in the hive mind ...

Still, there they were, and they spoke as if they were engaged in the most important tasks in the world. And they deferred domestic annoyances to their colleagues back Down Under.
This betrayed a disdain for voters that most of the country would have picked up by osmosis. It was a lovely week for Albanese and Wong but a terrible one for Labor. There they were in New York, banging on about climate change, while Australians were paying more than $200 to fill their cars. Albanese’s Security Council push used the slogan “We listen. We partner. We protect.” It was an astounding boast after his government refused to listen to warnings about rising antisemitism and Islamist extremism for almost three years, failed to partner against it and failed to protect us from a terror attack at Bondi.
There for all to see on the PM’s Instagram feed was the self-fascination of the elites and their disconnection from the concerns of the mainstream. This behaviour has been the wind beneath the wings of surging conservative forces such as Reform UK, MAGA in the US, National Rally in France, Brothers of Italy and One Nation in Australia.
No doubt Albanese had the controlling hand in his lavish itinerary. But it might very well have been arranged by Pauline Hanson; she could hardly thank him enough. Angus Taylor, too, riffed off the Prime Minister’s black-tie self-gratification.
The whole week was so discordant politically that it makes me wonder whether Albanese did not care; that he might have already decided this would be his last UN visit, a final hoorah before retirement next year. Would he be smart enough to retire undefeated before the next election?
Albanese again met his Japanese counterpart Sanae Takaichi, keeping his hands rigidly by his side with no overt apology for his cretinous melons insult. And he stayed so long in New York that he will not be back in time for the AFL grand final – surely another tactical move because after publicly sharing his fantasies about Kylie Minogue, shots of him ogling the pre-game entertainment would have been toxic. Still, footy or no footy, voters are left with an array of images of Albanese spinning around the UN this week, oblivious to the challenges at home. Labor will be worried these are the observations voters can’t get out of their heads.

Okay, the pond has done the Zionist News and done the usual reptile rant, what else?

The pond should at least note in passing that the reptiles have been spending an enormous amount of time giving the Plymouth Brethren a voice?

Why? Well game recognises game, cult recognises cult ...

And out of sheer perversity the pond decided to recognise at least a portion of Dame Slap, in incredibly defensive mood.

She says she's proud to be a mum, but there's such a thing as protesting too much ...

The pond could take only so much of this, and decided to cut back on the Dame, with this - spoiler alert - the final gobbet ...

Whatever, the pond will take almost anything other than whatever the MAGA cap-donning Dame Slap is having. There seems to be a resentful chip on shoulder lurking: mentions of "mum/s" 8; mentions of "dad/s" 0.

Finally the pond was faced with a choice. 

Do grating, garrulous Gemma, or do the Ughmann.

The pond decided that the Ughmann was too long - a full six gobbets deep - and the pond was already running overlong (damn you intermittent archive, get your act together).

So the pond booted the Ughmann to a Sunday 4 pm slot for specialists in Ugh, with garrulous Gemma needing only three screen caps ... and the first bit was just a repeat of an Albo excerpt, which the screen cap reduced to "lives", and even that was more than was needed ...

The pond wondered if it was necessary to give space to galling Gemma, grinding away, but found a reason.

The pond frequently rabbits on about the "hive mind", like that excruciating Exorcist II movie (now with splendid documentary 'making of'), and Gemma was proof that it wasn't as airy fairy a concept as the fairies at the bottom of the garden that sent Conan Doyle into a frenzy.

There really is a lizard Oz hive mind, a murmuration of reptiles.

See how the grating one cobbles together both Polonius and the dog botherer.

Been there before? Do it again ...

Sound familiar? 

Unfortunately the pond has already done its "compare and contrast" Haaretz story, and has done Polonius on Mark Scott, and so quickly moved on to the next and final gobbet ...

Reading this kind of incessant, inane repetition of reptile thought bubbles can send a sensitive reader insane, but luckily the pond spent years working out how to cope with mendacious propaganda of the 2D kind.

And the 'toons for this outing are ...

And so to yet another attempt to cope with the madness ...