The reptiles never-ending jihad against - or relentless, morbid, never-ending fascination with - comrade Dan reached a new peak early this morning ...
It was all there, glowering photo, and Liam Menzies, "reporter-at-large", doing Amazing Investigative Journalism in his own lunchtime, and luckily that's what the intermittent archive is for ...
Daniel Andrews living in luxury Mornington Peninsula home owned by Labor donor
When did Andrews resign?
27th September 2023, and yet here the reptiles are, feeding One Nation's chant of "lock him up", a call too rich even for the dog botherer.
Of all the things in the world requiring the pond's attention, the location and lifestyle of comrade Dan ranks at the very bottom.
How bad is it getting in the spineless stakes of feeding the fake died hair ranga monster?
Another beefy boofhead job for the intermittent archive, with the note that we've seen this ICE show elsewhere ...
Angus Taylor turns to much lower migration target to fend off Pauline Hanson’s net negative plan
He's such a needlessly fawning chump, with the spine of a jellyfish.
And then came even more work for the intermittent archive.
The pond decided to consign the bromancer to that distant cornfield, and personally arranged a listing ...
Antisemitism is a reminder of left’s distorted world view
This was a painful step for the pond, what with the bromancer being a perennial favourite, but the pond is well over all offerings from the Australian Daily Zionist News and the relentless refusal to acknowledge or track the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon.
The pond didn't even have enough enthusiasm to turn to Haaretz for a balancing story, but will offer a teaser trailer... spoiler alert, it's just a serve of the bog standard, ritualised flood of rhetoric, tinged with a kind word for a different religious cult.
How the bromancer, and the reptiles in general, love cults, but then, being in the cult of the lizard Oz, why wouldn't they?
Roll on ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank, the bromancer's got your back.
But did this leave the pond short?
Fear not, there were old faithfuls, gushing like geysers ...
Digital safety law risks overreach into censorship
6 min
The caption for the coupling which with extraordinary visual cleverness features logos and Grant: With social media in mind, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has been allowed extraordinary powers. Picture right: NewsWire
The plea for attention in the intertubes jungle: Make us preferred on Google
It might startle correspondents, but the pond has a little sympathy for the quarry whisperer in this outing, because it's the pond's considered opinion - no defamation intended - that Julie Inman Grant is barking mad, with many bees incessantly buzzing in her noggin. (The pond's partner's personal contacts with her informs this view).
The Caterist took to his task with the vigour of a man who knew which way water rolled:
After more than a decade of mission creep and two substantial legislative amendments, the eSafety Commission now faces a far more ambitious task: promoting “safer, more positive online experiences”.
The eSafety Commission’s architects were not blind to the risk of institutional overreach. In his second reading speech, minister Paul Fletcher explicitly warned against creating a regulatory system that was “excessive or heavy-handed”.
The reptiles dropped Fletch into the mix: Former communications minister Paul Fletcher warned against a system that was ‘excessive or heavy-handed’. Picture: Matthew Poon
The Caterist took up the Fletch cry, and as an anonymised blogger, was the pond the right candidate to stand in his way?
The “sock puppet” clause in the proposed Digital Duty of Care legislation would further expand the agency’s powers. The eSafety Commissioner would be granted unchecked authority to assume false or fictitious online identities. Effectively, the regulator would become a law unto itself, run by unelected officials accountable to parliament in only the loosest sense.
The original legislation set clear boundaries between the regulator’s role and the police. The proposed legislation busts the lines wide open, granting the commissioner the powers of investigator, judge and executioner.
These extraordinary powers are granted, apparently, to protect our “safety”, one of the most elastic words in the political lexicon. Nobody can reasonably declare themselves against it, which makes it a potent justification for state power.
A positive online experience can be anything the commissioner decides it should be. Negative online experiences, on the other hand, are anything the commissioner decides we should be protected against. The danger lies not merely in the extraordinary powers parliament is being asked to give the eSafety Commissioner, but in the boundless remit within which they might be used.
“The car industry pushed back,” she said. “But Australia stayed the course.” Yet a product safety regulation with a clear engineering solution differs from regulating the flow of information. A law that insists you buckle up to protect against the consequences of a crash differs greatly from a law that tells you where you may drive.
There came another reminder of the subject of the flood water-whisperer's ire ... Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant compares Digital Duty of Care to seatbelt legislation in the 1970s. Picture: NewsWire/ Tertius Pickard
The quarry whisperer, aroused by the sighting, embarked on a lengthy final rant:
If parliament agrees to the proposed expansion of power, we can expect the number to rise further.
Few would challenge police investigators’ right to adopt a false identity to investigate potential criminal behaviour, provided appropriate checks and balances are in place.
Under the government’s eSafety draft, the commissioner requires no outside authorisation to create a sock puppet. The legislation requires no register of the identities, no audit and no reporting to parliament on how many have been deployed. There is no restriction on numbers. The commissioner, or anyone to whom the powers are delegated, could create as many sock puppets as they wish.
A police officer who misuses false identities commits an offence punishable by up to two years in prison. A sock puppeteer authorised by the commissioner need only show they acted “in good faith” to gain immunity from civil action or any other proceeding.
Grant’s second five-year term expires next year, presenting an opportunity to pose the question parliament has conspicuously failed to ask: Why do we need an eSafety commissioner at all?
That is not to say criminal activity committed online should be unpunished. Yet fraud, intimidation or the distribution of intimate images without consent are matters best left to the police. Unlawful behaviour wherever it occurs should be dealt with by the courts, where the rules of evidence and rights to appeal are established by common law, not an unaccountable bureaucracy.
Parliament is perfectly capable of updating the criminal law when technology creates new ways of committing old offences.
Beyond that point, however, we have every reason to be nervous about outsourcing responsibility for our wellbeing to the state.
The draft bill has no trouble defining serious harms: child sexual exploitation, grooming, incitement to extreme or sexual violence, suicide and self-harm, terrorism and criminal offending.
Yet it is less clear on the content that might be described as lawful but awful, material that might be offensive or morally repugnant to many but may reasonably deserve protection under the principle of free speech. Other jurisdictions have wrestled with this challenge, to which there is no obvious answer. Yet leaving it to the discretion of the minister of the day through the power of legislative instrument, as the draft legislation does, is hardly a satisfactory solution.
Adults can decide for themselves what they wish to read, watch and hear. Parents should have the principal responsibility for deciding what their children encounter.
Technology companies should be encouraged to develop so-called “middleware”: filters, parental controls, blocking tools, privacy settings and third-party software for organising feeds. If popular concern about online safety is as widespread as the government seems to think, market demand will be strong.
The Digital Duty of Care bill has served an important purpose by demonstrating that top-down regulation of digital content is impractical and dystopian. Better to take our chances with the occasional online bully, crank or fanatic than with a state that claims the power to protect us from them all.
Only one note.
There was a link at the start of that last paragraph, and for a fleeting moment, the pond's heart leapt.
Had the reptiles actually provided a link to the outside world? Would the hive mind be taken to the actual Digital Duty of Care bill?
Fear not, it was just a link to petulant Peta ... Labor’s duty of care is really all about duty of control
Sheesh, must the pond fall into line with petulant Peta too? No way ...
For the actual bill, go here ...
That note? The reptiles are constantly pleading for Google's attention.
Never mind the debilitating paywall, if they insist on carrying on like a religious cult of the Amish kind, shunning the world, staying inside the hive mind, why should anyone care?
And now credit where no credit is due:
The pond had to quickly step past Fergo, doing his best to maintain the lizard Oz climate science denialist rage ...
Chris Bowen promised to bring the world to the Pacific for pre-COP. But the speakers in Fiji and Tuvalu look more like the Melbourne Writers Festival than the G20.
By Richard Ferguson
Canberra bureau chief
Writers? At a Writers' Festival?
As the real header made clear, it was bloody interfering womyn that were the problem:
Julia Gillard, Jacinda Ardern? Chris Bowen’s set-list of speakers for pre-COP is not up to scratch
How could those useless harpies, those irrelevant harridans, compete with the infinite wisdom of Fergo and the lizards of Oz?
Here, have more of a 'toon break, have an immortal Rowe celebrating a sojourn with a womyn:
And speaking of womyn, the pond turned with salivating expectation to the treat of the day, a serve of the Groaning ... (closely related to the Shining):
By Judith Sloan
Bragging rights to relatively low government debt are all Costello’s; Labor has made it worse
7 min
The caption for the opening snap of Petey boy looking stern and Jimbo looking bewildered: Peter Costello must wonder why he bothered; Jim Chalmers thought he had all the answers when he claimed he could reinvent capitalism. Pictures: News 24
The plea for relevance: Make us preferred on Google
The pond must begin by confessing disappointment.
Sure the pond did the usual build up, and attempted to lather up the crowd, but it was a bit like the way the mad King has seen falling crowd numbers and a marked lack of enthusiasm in his recent speechifying.
This was just a bog standard rant about why everything was wrong, grist for the lizard Oz mill, but unexceptional stuff for Dame Groan ...
On the upside, the pond could avoid notes, and end it quickly so it could get on with a serve of Weet-Bix ...
He must even wonder why he established the Future Fund, given the threats to this sovereign wealth fund that have emerged since the Albanese Labor government was elected.
When the current Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, brags about Australia’s relatively low government debt by international standards, Costello must surely be choking on his Weet-Bix. Look at the figures – it was all Costello; Labor has made it worse.
When Costello became our top money man, Australian government net debt stood at $96bn or 18 per cent of GDP. When the Howard government was voted out in 2007, net debt was minus $40bn or minus 3.4 per cent of GDP. It was a tour de force that was never supported by the Labor opposition.
Naturally Jimbo was the least of this trio. Just look at his hand-waving and the supercilious grin on his mugwump face. No wonder the hive mind cowered in fear ... Jim Chalmers’ changes to the Future Fund were denounced as 'fiscal vandalism' by John Howard and creating 'a political slush fund' by Peter Costello.
Dame Groan was starry-eyed about Petey "have a spawn for me" Boy, and way down on Jimbo, but the chanting of "we'll all be rooned" exceeded even Hanrahan's expectations ...
(Mind you, the quality of all PEFOs is not the same. The one issued for the 2022 election was a shocker, forecasting a budget deficit for 2021-22 of $80bn when the actual figure was a deficit of $32bn, for example. The Albanese government has attempted to feast on this rotting carcass ever since it has been in office.)
The Intergenerational Report also emerged from the Charter of Budget Honesty. To be released every five years – Labor has shortened this interval for political reasons – the aim of the exercise is to look at the budgetary pressures likely to emerge over the next 40 years.
Costello never saw the IGR as a bragging exercise, but rather as a means of imposing fiscal restraint to ensure future pressures on the budget could be headed off at the pass. It was never a reflection of his “meanness” but rather his strong ethical position that it is inherently unfair for the current generation to rack up debt for future generations to pay off.
Let’s not forget that vocal advocacy for some of the government’s biggest current programs was around in Costello’s day – think here the NDIS, the Gonski school-funding model and the like. His firm response was “no”, followed by the obvious point that funding for disability, education and many other matters rests with the states.
The pond has noted before the tendency to feature Albo and Jimbo in gloomy postures, but the thumb snap for this AV distraction outdoes Pravda in its hey day, what with Albo looking befuddled and bemused, and some unhappy warrior lurking behind, hands on head. Jimbo, is that you?
Support for Albanese and Chalmers collapses in wake of rate hike
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers' popularity has taken a hit in the wake of last week's interest rate decision.
Between ecstasy and despair is a thin line, and after the exaltation of Petey Boy came an even fuller flowering of "we'll all be rooned", possibly by Xmas ...
But the point here is that this outcome has nothing to do with the efforts of Labor governments. The Rudd/Swan duo spent up big during the Global Financial Crisis (2009 to 2012), adding to the debt. The four budget surpluses that Swan announced came to nothing. During the pandemic, Labor supported even more spending than the Coalition government splashed to deal with the situation.
Since assuming office in 2022, Labor has thrown out the fiscal rule book. Chalmers refuses to set out a strict set of numerical fiscal rules – even his former boss, Wayne Swan, had rules, though he failed to meet them. Sound fiscal rules could have ensured that the budget would currently be in surplus, an outcome recommended by important luminaries such as former Reserve Bank governor, Phil Lowe, and former treasury secretary, Martin Parkinson.
Chalmers also declined to impose a global tax cap on the budget. According to his thinking, “we’re not attracted to the government’s tax cap, and the reason we’re not attracted to it is because it seems to us like quite an arbitrary cap imposed for political reasons rather than good economic reasons.” The Coalition’s cap of 23.9 per cent has now been exceeded under Labor and it is still running a budget deficit!
Prior to Covid, government payments were under a quarter of GDP. This financial year, they are expected to come in at 26.8 per cent. This is a massive change, making the size of government larger than it has ever been outside war or a pandemic.
Annual government spending is now well over $800bn, having been less than $500bn before Covid. Government spending on the so-called “care economy” has risen by more than 50 per cent since the Albanese government was first elected.
The reptiles' choice of thumb illustrations is now beyond Pravda, almost comically Der Stürmer, with this AV distraction featuring a downcast Jimbo...so that the dog botherer could insert himself into Dame Groan's rant ...
Chalmers called out for his ‘addiction to spending’ as Aussies prepare for a rate rise
Shadow Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Dan Tehan says Treasurer Jim Chalmers has an “addiction” to spending that is driving interest rates up. “Everything points to Jim Chalmers' addiction to spending,” Mr Tehan told News24 host Chris Kenny. “As for the Labor Party and Anthony Albanese’s concern, that spending is just going to continue. This is really going to hurt Australians at this time. “They’re struggling as it is. The last thing they need is another interest rate rise.”
Dame Groan joined Jimbo in being downcast in her final gobbet of gloom and despair...
As for the Prime Minister’s claim that the government has achieved $178bn of budget savings, some other animals are needed to join the pigs in the sky. He earnestly tells us that “every single economic statement that we have handed down has had savings”.
This is just arcane budget trickery that shouldn’t convince anyone. The most credible estimate of the net addition that Labor has made to the budget comes from economist Saul Eslake, who puts the figure at just above $100bn.
And don’t you just love a bit of budget “reprioritisation”? It’s like Kim Kardashian bragging that she bought the expensive black handbag rather than the tan one. It’s irrelevant to the budget bottom line.
As hard-pressed householders sit around the kitchen table figuring out how they are going to afford higher mortgage payments, higher fuel costs and higher expenses generally, they must wonder how we got to this point.
As a firm believer in big government, Chalmers thought he had all the answers when he claimed he could reinvent capitalism. What he didn’t count on was the persistence of inflation and the role that excessive government spending plays in that outcome.
The cost of government debt is about to escalate. He talks about boosting productivity but can only cite trivial measures while avoiding the main game – energy and industrial relations. We are stuck with sub-par economic growth and no way of escaping.
It seems a long time since Costello held the fiscal reins.
Cheer up Dame Groan, if the reptiles keep on going on this way, soon enough Pauline will be PM, and what good times we'll see then ...
As for the credit where no credit is due? Sorry, there wasn't one. For some reason, the reptiles cut the Dame Groan thumb ...
The pond had to look elsewhere in the lizard Oz to ensure that attention was paid ... she's not to be allowed to fall into her grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person.
Go team... and the pond might have featured this one before, but it seems a nice capper for the Groaning...
How many more loons could anyone want?
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