Wildfires in Europe?
Vlad the sociopath at work in Ukraine? Ukraine giving Vlad the sociopath a hard time?
A new trade war announced by mad King Donald?
More trouble with Iran? Assorted straits in dire trouble?
Murder in the West Bank?
Sorry, there's a world out there, and things are happening in it, but this is the lizard Oz, and so early in the weekend, this was the headline feature.
After Qantas: Alan Joyce on his high-flying career and the benefits of hindsight
The former Qantas CEO grounded the fleet, outsourced staff, insulted customers and became a very rich man. Only one of these does he regret.
By Caroline Overington
Nah, not today Caroline, the intermittent archive can take that one.
Sheesh, occasionally it'd be nice to be in contact with times present.
Down below that was a bucket of Labor government stories, with the usual bashometer measuring a high level of bash ...
Read the prolific Geoff chambering a typical round if you must ...
Ed Husic embraces his role as chief government whinger, and Anthony Albanese is over it
Albanese had assumed his government’s historic decision to overturn decades of foreign policy and recognise Palestine statehood would placate the Left. He was wrong.
Follow Yim and Brownie if inclined and be astonished by the many and varied ways that the Australian Daily Zionist News goes about its business...
Labor files revealed: Extremes of party’s dark underbelly
Astonishing extremes of ALP rank and file laid bare on US, Israel and terrorism policy in amendments
Labor delegates have proposed stripping the US’s status as Australia’s ‘closest security ally’ and exiting AUKUS, as senior figures scramble to contain a damaging floor debate over Israel.
Dark underbelly? Aka any hint of noting ethnic cleansing.
Marvel at the many ways that the reptiles pursue a singular path in favour of Benji ...
Western apologists glorify Hamas as legitimate resistance, but the group serves its own ends – not my people.
By Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib
Um, you do realise that few people glorify Hamas, but in proposing that, all you're doing is serving as a useful tool for the lizard Oz Daily Zionist News agenda?
Noble words ...
Only when Hamas is no longer in control of Gaza can the violence end and the future begin.
But what an inspired source for the reptiles ...
This is an edited extract from Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib’s Jewish Quarterly essay, Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages, out on Monday. Alkhatib is a Gazan writer and advocate, founder of Realign for Palestine and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC.
Morry Schwartz strikes again ...
It was no better over on the extreme far right where simplistic Simon paraded about ...
Having recognised Palestinian statehood, Albanese will preside over ALP party policy that’s now explicitly critical of Israel
Anthony Albanese cements his grip on power, but a shift on Israel alarms Jewish leaders.
By Simon Benson
Pro-Israel past? Aka pro ethnic cleansing lizard Oz Daily Zionist News agenda.
Nothing to criticise the current government of Israel about, right? The reptiles are right, right? Right?
Sorry, the pond should stop watching The Daily Show.
There's nothing like shifting away from ethnic cleansing to alarm the reptiles ...
With a sigh and a sob, the pond knew its duty, because the Brexit-loving bromancer was on parade ...
The header: Labour pain: Burnham’s back-to-the-70s Britain a grim warning for Australia; A personal brush with a decaying NHS drove home a stark truth: Andy Burnham’s 1970s-style policy agenda is a cautionary tale as Anthony Albanese treads the same path.
The caption and credit for a shameless collage attributed to a certain Emilia, who bravely refused to allow AI to take the blame for the meretricious nonsense: A photo comp of Anthony Albanese, right, and Andy Burnham in a 1970s style doctors office. Artwork by Emilia Tortorella. Sources: iStock / PhotoShop Firefly 3 /Supplied
Having proudly spent much time campaigning for the breaking of Britain, from Brexit to Boris, the bromancer had the cheek to whine and whinge about Britain being broken, and for a bigly six minutes and with just one visual interruption ...
Both Burnham and Albanese are committed to left-wing economic and social policies that replicate the 1970s, the last era of catastrophic Anglophone social democratic failure. Both men bizarrely idealise the 70s. It’s perverse, as though a 12-year-old boy chose cabbage and brussels sprouts for a birthday treat.
Burnham thinks all Britain’s mistakes began with Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Albanese (who has devoted his life to “fighting Tories”) and his ministers take inspiration from the disastrous 70s Whitlam government while determinedly becoming the complete opposite of the successful 80s Hawke government, which they never reference.
What should have been a mundane visit to a doctor in London recently brought home to me just how much Britain has fallen apart, how poorly it now compares with successful societies.
A brush with the NHS
A few weeks ago in London my wife was ill — not with a life-threatening problem — but ill. The emergency care I once experienced in Britain was fantastic but the National Health Service in routine operations is now a sprawling chaotic mess, an intense frustration for British voters.
Britain and Australia have reciprocal health arrangements. In the past, an Aussie could take their passport and Medicare card and secure an appointment with a local GP, no problem. Now, no NHS GP clinic I tried in London would take a visiting Australian. That’s not really discrimination, they weren’t taking Brits either. One clinic’s website told registered patients to outline their problem in an online appointment application. If it was urgent, someone would be back to them within 48 hours.
A famous British cartoon has a couple standing on a mountain peak. One remarks: “They say on a clear day you can see your GP.”
Hotel staff advised us to go to a hospital emergency department. But while British hospitals are good in emergencies, to present there with a regular illness would be a monstrous waste of their resources. Not only that – the wait times! People qualify for retirement, indeed die of old age, waiting to be seen in NHS emergency departments.
The Scandanavian experience
We then spent a couple of weeks in Scandinavia. The contrast was fantastic, especially regarding doctors.
In Oslo, on a Sunday, we asked the guy on the counter at our modest hotel if there was any way to see a doctor. He showed us the website of the Doctor Dropin clinics. Although I got the site in translation it reverted to Norwegian, so he filled out the online form for us, showed me which appointments were available and where the nearest clinic was.
At the clinic there was no receptionist and apparently no danger of vandalism. We entered the waiting room and registered our presence on a computer. At the appointed time the doctor opened his door and welcomed us in. The appointment was scheduled for 20 minutes and was unhurried. The doctor spoke perfect English, was attentive, competent, able to conduct blood and other tests straight away, prescribed medicine and located online the nearest open pharmacy for us (many shops are closed in Oslo on Sunday). It cost about the same as a non-bulk billed GP visit in Sydney.
How much did the reptiles care about this pro forma bromancer bashing? They didn't even bother to provide a graphic for the audio interruption ...
LISTEN NOW: Can new UK PM Andy Burnham save ‘Broken Britain’?
So the pond decided to show what was on offer ...
Nah, what a relief it's just a screen cap.
Meanwhile, the bromancer had turned to a standard form of furriner bashing, as if that explained Britain's dismal situation post-Brexit, and the likes of Boris, and the bromancer's past prescriptions for a very sick patient (and this is the UK in AUKUS we should be relying on?)
Mass immigration has overwhelmed Britain’s NHS. But it’s not just the health system in crisis. Government generally doesn’t work any more. Neither does much else. One in four working-age Brits officially suffers a disability. A million 18 to 24-year-olds are involved in neither education, employment nor training.
The British state has never been bigger or more inefficient. Taxation represents nearly 39 per cent of GDP, higher than at any time since World War II. Just like Australia, seemingly everyone in the government sector works from home, which means they don’t work much at all. An English friend needs a minor update on his passport and has been told this could take six months and cannot be accelerated.
And so to the heart of the problem for the bromancer ... a singular lack of Tories and Tory incompetence ... and a chance to label Albo as a fanatical leftie, as bad as Gough ... Andy Burnham, right, is the most left-wing PM since World War II. Anthony Albanese, left, is second in Australia to Whitlam. Pictures: News Corp / AFP
And what's the point of berating the hapless Poms if you can't use it as a way to bash Labor down under?
There are a whole lot of things Burnham wants to do. They all involve spending money he hasn’t got. Reprising Albanese, none of Burnham’s initiatives will accelerate economic growth. Burnham has in the past pledged to make social care for the elderly free, like the NHS. This would cost £18bn ($34.4bn) a year at least. He has said he’ll raise defence spending. If he’s to get anywhere near Britain’s pledges that would cost another £10bn a year, though that’s one ambition he certainly won’t realise. He wants to subsidise public transport, subsidise consumer energy prices, raise the tax-free threshold for low-income earners, renationalise vast swathes of industry and much more.
All this is tens of billions upon tens of billions. Yet Britain already has a national debt equal to 95 per cent of GDP. It borrows more than £115bn a year. The Burnham government has started off by making wonderfully woolly and unreliable fiscal statements. In his first 48 hours as Prime Minister, Burnham spent the odd billion or two providing modest goodies for voters – among them 85 pence a week in electricity subsidies for the average family (about one takeaway coffee a month).
Some of this would be paid for by not proceeding with the digital ID initiative. Some tart Starmerite pointed out the government had not yet budgeted any money for the digital ID initiative. So that explanation was just flim-flam. Sound Canberra familiar?
A bad joke
Indicating how pandering to activists and extremists will go, Burnham made just one foreign policy statement. Ukraine? Russia? Iran? China? No, in a country awash with antisemitism fuelled in part by hate-filled anti-Israel demonstrations, Burnham apologised that Labour had been too soft on Israel, not strong enough for Palestine. Social cohesion is even worse in Britain than Australia.
In the 70s Britain was a bad joke, needing an IMF bailout, crippled by strikes, the sick man of Europe. That’s Burnham’s happy time, Labour’s happy time. In Australia, Whitlam’s government was so disastrous more Australians left the country than migrants came in. Whitlam was rejected, twice, in landslide election losses. But in Labor myth Whitlam is the perfect leader. Thatcher’s election led to 18 years of Conservative rule. Brits became wealthier, many more owned their homes, London became the global financial centre, the UK had a powerful military and was central in defeating communism. For Burnham, this Thatcherism was all bad.
Australia and Britain today embody the crisis of social democracy. Burnham and Albanese are left-wing leaders of antique vintage, as though their respective electorates somehow mistakenly bought a Morris Minor or FJ Holden as the new family car. Their economic policies are impoverishing, building structural obstacles to growth. Social policy is woke, foreign policy often fatuous. Only in the vapours of Labor myth is the view today Olympian. For those forced to live in the real world, the outlook is bleak.
Perhaps spending squillions on nuking the submarine force is the real bleakness ...
Remember the bromancer glory days? Some do ...
The ABC under Buttrose was in lockstep with NewsCorp in its enthusiastic backing of AUKUS. Its Sunday morning flagship Insiders having dedicated a March 2023 program entirely to the topic, with Peter Hartcher from Nine offering his usual persuasive take and Greg Sheridan from NewsCorp bending over backwards to debunk anything negative said on the matter by White or Keating. They had contested Sheridan’s mantra of China’s “radical militarism and extreme aggression”, a fixation Sheridan has obsessed about since the days of ‘reds under the beds’ during the 1950s and 60s.
Sheridan projected himself on Insiders as an AUKUS sceptic until it supposedly dawned on him that the Virginia class submarines would fill the gap before delivery of the nuclear-powered subs promise, and so he claimed to see for the first time that that extra element would ensure the wonderful strategy worked by “complicating the thinking of any aggressor”.
The pond deeply regrets that the reptiles didn't provide a segue for the pond so that it might slip in the odd homage to mad King Donald, but whatever ... how about a little bleakness of a Faux Noise kind?
And so to the bonus, and a very reluctant one it is for the pond ...
The header: It’s not about Pauline Hanson – it’s about what she represents to disillusioned voters; The reasons a third of the electorate is drifting to One Nation seem clear and the political establishment ignores them at its own peril.
The pertinent question, surely, is frankly why Frank must bother with this sort of collage: The pertinent question, surely, is why are people voting for One Nation rather than the Coalition parties. Sources: Supplied. Artwork by Frank Ling.
The pond has been well over Gina's pet from the very start, long long ago.
There's something about the voice that grates, the worst sort of Tamworth-sounding shrew with something of a deep north toad overlay.
The pond realises this sort of personal response will be perceived as wrong, a bit like finding RFK Jr.'s voice hard to listen to, when his policies should be considered, but as he's got no policies worth contemplating, it comes back to that voice. (No poo jokes please).
So it's always been with Gina's pampered pet.
Why bother with the dog botherer going on about the wonders of Pauline's voice? Because it's the way she presents the policies of the lizard Oz to the deplorables, that's why, because the reptiles have always loved the bigoted and the stupid.
And that's why the dog botherer spends six minutes scribbling about his infatuation.
It's way more revealing of him and the hive mind than it is about Gina's pet.
Deep down but also on the superficial, allegedly "authentic" surface loved by the dog botherer, she acts as a mirror for sundry reptile fixations and phobias...
Most of the focus is on Hanson, but few of the issues are new. She has long talked about men as domestic violence victims, flirted with xenophobia and proffered economically dubious policies.
The pertinent question, surely, is why are people voting for One Nation rather than the Coalition parties (as they have done in the South Australian election and the Farrer federal by-election) and why are they telling pollsters they intend to do so in Victoria, NSW and federally? In other words, rather than analysing, critiquing and even demonising Hanson, the political debate might more usefully consider why almost a third of voters are prepared to overlook all of One Nation’s shortcomings and support the party regardless.
At this point the reptiles slipped in an AV distraction ...
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce has again defended comments from One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson in a bizarre interview on ABC’s 730. When asked about Ms Hanson’s direction for One Nation, Mr Joyce was briefly distracted by his dog and yelled at it to “sit down” before apologising for the interruption. 730 host Sarah Ferguson urged Mr Joyce to answer the question and not focus on the dog, to which Mr Joyce replied “don’t be rude” as the interview took a tense turn.
The pond seized the moment with gratitude. The pond had been wondering if it would ever get a chance to pay tribute to the latest moment for Tamworth's eternal shame ...
What a a relief to be able to pay tribute - get around behind you bloody useless hund!! - and with that out of the way, please allow the dog botherer to explain why he's enchanted by Pauline and what she proposes (and remember for the sake of the argument that well paid hacks labouring for the Emeritus Chairman are never part of a 'leet):
If an imperfect, inexperienced and barely organised movement in our body politic is attracting high levels of support, why? What has gone missing from the other choices that has caused so many to coalesce around One Nation?
The short answer is that voters are rejecting the political establishment (or even the political class, which includes the major parties, bureaucracies, academics, pollsters and media). Predictably this loose coalition hits back the only way it seems to know how: by attacking Hanson and One Nation for daring to play politics outside its own unwritten rules of engagement.
The critics parse every phrase from Hanson and her team, verbal her endlessly to fuel feigned outrage. The One Nation leader mentions the White Australia policy and they say she laments it or wants to bring it back; Hanson mentions simple facts about domestic violence and is slammed as heartless; and Barnaby’s hilarious live-to-air rebuke of his dog is interpreted as a character flaw.
These attacks tend to be wind beneath One Nation’s wings because they underline the party’s anti-establishment credentials and insult voters by deeming them too silly to comprehend what is really being said – surely Hanson and her colleagues are controversial enough without making stuff up.
These episodes also serve as reminders that One Nation politicians are authentic rather than slick, the reversal of the political class standard.
Just to remind the hive mind of how authentic Gina's pampered pet is, the reptiles slipped in a couple of truly authentic snaps of an awesomely authentic holyday... Pauline Hanson holidaying in Sicily earlier this month. Mining magnate Gina Rinehart cooling off in the pool of the Grand Hotel San Pietro in Taormina.
The dog botherer continued his slow build ...
Crosby noted that major parties are too often driven by opinion polls and ideology rather than good governance in the interests of voters. “Voters can tell the difference between a party thinking about them and a party thinking about itself,” he noted, “and they punish the second without mercy.”
Most everything voters have heard from our major parties for a decade or more has been insincere, ideologically motivated or ultimately contradicted. Little wonder people have drifted to a rough and ready outfit that has said the same things constantly for decades, even through periods of virulent derision and palpable uninterest.
You do not need to support One Nation to recognise any of this. No one could accuse Hanson of being too timid to say what she thinks, scripted by spinmeisters or controlled by pollsters; her prized political asset is her status as the anti-politician. This makes talk of her as a potential prime minister completely counterintuitive, despite the mathematical possibility.
Hanson needs to avoid discussion of power-sharing arrangements, preference deals and the rest of it – no matter how essential they are likely to be – because they immediately graft One Nation on to the political establishment. It will be fascinating to watch this paradox play out. The mavericks have become so popular they now have to consider how they might become the new establishment.
One Nation’s rise has played out through core policy debates. Hanson has been a hate figure for 30 years because of her strident views on mass immigration and concerns about its sources (“I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians”).
At this point the reptiles offered up a chart which proved hard to cap ... this was the best the pond could manage ...
Primary vote (%)
Source: electoral commissions
How they love to talk Gina's pet up.
Onwards and upwards for Pauline and the reptile agenda.
And so to the real point.
The lizard Oz is Hansonite, the Hansonites are devoted lizard Oz readers, and what Gina's pet says on topics such as the Voice are precisely what the reptiles say on the voice ...
The major parties have failed to control immigration and been squeamish about discussing the mix, so they have been peas in a pod compared with One Nation’s harsh and consistent immigration alarm.
Voters concerned about immigration – and the major parties now recognise many of those concerns are legitimate – have drifted to the anti-immigration party. Consistency can pay dividends in politics.
Likewise on Indigenous issues. Hanson was first expelled from the Liberal Party because of her criticism of Indigenous programs and separatism. Almost three decades later when the voice debate divided the nation the Coalition eventually opposed the proposal and won the political battle. But voters exercised by this knew that while other politicians sniffed the wind, Hanson had held this position all along.
There came another interruption, this time with a graphic ..
Pauline Hanson backs mass deportation
Is the dog botherer troubled by notions of mass deportations?
Nah, not really, the dog botherer is delighted with notions of monoculture and most especially climate change, because what Canadian and European wildfires?
Consistency has been a strength on other issues, in particular net zero. Labor has been fearmongering over climate change and delusional about emissions for more than two decades, while the Coalition has waxed and waned between signing on to Paris, scrapping carbon taxes and then adopting net zero.
There came a reinforcement that Gina's pampered pet isn't really a politician, Pauline Hanson’s prized political asset is her status as the anti-politician. Picture: NewsWire/Philip Gostelow
Surely that deserved a 'toon and while the pond has run it before, why not run it again as a way of coping with that quizzical stare of 'please explain'?
And so to the dog botherer embracing the full One Nation agenda, with a litany of what is apparently true and just ...
Then there is honesty. Nobody has accused Hanson or her team of telling political lies – most of the time they get into strife for being too forthright about what they truthfully believe.
Without the responsibility of being in government or being seen as an alternative government, One Nation has not had to make serious promises or abide by them. This makes for an easy and sharp contrast to the major parties that have become parodies of political trust.
From Scott Morrison’s secret ministries to Coalition leadership treachery and flip-flopping on climate policies, to Labor’s secret tax increases and Anthony Albanese’s endless list of broken promises, the major parties have simply broken faith with all but their most hardened supporters. Therefore some see One Nation providing an opportunity to punish dishonesty, to hit back at politicians taking voters for a ride.
Also, One Nation is anti-elite. Voters clearly believe they can teach the political class a lesson by voting for Hanson’s mob – they have told me as much in straightforward terms.
Query such people about One Nation’s ability to govern and they will shrug their shoulders and ask how much worse government could get. Indeed, when I suggested to Hanson some months ago that she likely faced a problem recruiting hundreds of candidates, some of whom were bound to be duds and cause embarrassment, she retorted by asking whether the major parties had done so well selecting high-calibre candidates – touche!
The reasons voters are drifting to One Nation seem clear. While the Coalition has borne the brunt of the trend, Labor needs to be wary too (as Wayne Swan has suggested) as mainstream voters become disillusioned by economic malaise and political lies.
What does this embrace of Gina's pet mean?
No prizes for guessing. It means that the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way must swing way over to the mad hard right - perhaps even follow Malcolm Roberts on the matter of climate science - and what frabjous joy that will produce in the hive mind, and its devoted extreme far right pundits ...
Tell 'em dog botherer ...
The Coalition under Angus Taylor has started to reset its policies and rhetoric, particularly on immigration, net zero, taxation and national cohesion. Yet poll watchers will be frustrated if they look for quick corrections.
What do the reptiles want? Say it again ...
Give the beefy boofhead time, and he'll come around to the lizard Oz policy agenda.
Monoculture now (perhaps dressed as "national cohension"), furriner bashing, a flat tax (Easytax for billionaires), and climate science denialism ... and who knows, soon enough we'll be at one with mad King Donald ... and talking sensibly about tariffs and a flat earth ...
Meanwhile, on another planet entirely unknown to the reptiles ...
