After yesterday's excess of reptiles, the pond was looking forward to a quiet meditative Sunday, and who better to dull the senses and induce a sense of a wondrous reptile lotos land?
Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness, And utterly consumed with sharp distress, While all things else have rest from weariness? All things have rest: why should we reptiles toil alone, We only toil, who are the first of things, And make perpetual moan, Still from one sorrow to another thrown: Nor ever fold our wings, And cease from wanderings, Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm; Nor harken what the inner spirit sings, "There is no joy but calm!" Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things? (The full thingie here)
But Polonius is all for toiling and perpetual moan ...
The header: How Hanson’s plan to oust ALP could backfire; One Nation has a preference problem. And it’s one that could hand another election victory to Labor.
The caption for the hair-dyed ranga: One Nation leader Pauline Hanson. Picture: Getty Images
Suddenly the pond was awake again and wildly excited.
The pond was delighted that the party that had no truck with 'leets and the establishment and the likes of investment bankers decided to give all that nonsense away, and go the full establishment hog. A bit like the end of Animal Farm.
Of course this home of dinkum Oz workers and battlers, oi, oi, loves investment bankers ...
Referencing Hanson’s calls for Australia to be a “monoculture”, Newman said Japan and Korea were “monoculture[s]”.
“[They’re] absolutely super successful nations who pride themselves on that thing. If I ever thought that One Nation was racist or any of these sorts of things, why would I join it? I mean, it’s … almost hypocritical of me to do so.”
He said Hanson’s inability to remember the name of the Japanese prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, in a News24 documentary was “an on-the-spot sort of moment”.
“She knows who Prime Minister Takaichi is,” he said.
Asked what the party’s plan was to foster social cohesion, Newman said: “We’re going to get rid of wokery, right?”
From his very first speech in the Senate he was on the money ...
...Roberts said his own passion for politics and policy had been “unleashed” during the “grassroots uprising of the Australian people” against the reviled and dishonest carbon dioxide tax.
He then questioned the consensus that global temperatures have been rising as a consequence of industrialisation.
He said that, from the 1930s to the 1970s, during the period of the greatest industrialisation in human history, atmospheric temperatures actually “cooled”.
“Another inconvenient fact, temperatures statistically have not been warming since 1995,” he said.
“Temperatures are now cooler than 130 years ago and this is the reverse of what we’re blatantly told by the Bureau of Meteorology that has manipulated cooling trends into false warming trends.”
He said Australians could not rely on information from Australian government bodies and institutions.
“I have used freedom-of-information requests, correspondence and reports from the heads of the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, the UN [and] universities to show there is no data proving human use of hydro-carbon fuels effects climate. None,” he said.
“Yet the core climate claim is that carbon dioxide from our human activity will one day, some day, catastrophically warm our planet.”
Hello Nepal. Malcolm sends his best glacier-melting wishes.
And this seemed unnecessary what with there being no need to combat the climate hoax:
...Mr Newman, who will contest the Labor-held seat of Cessnock in the Hunter Valley, said he would like to see less business regulation and a greater investment in non-renewable forms of energy.
"In California, which runs a very heavy net zero, very left-wing kind of style of government, since COVID they've lost 1.2 million people who've fled to other states," he said.
"Now they're all in Texas because of cheap energy and low taxes.
"We want to get cheap energy, just like Florida and Texas, back into New South Wales to help make businesses more competitive."
Mr Newman described the plan to close the Eraring coal-fired power station as "economic suicide" and said coal and nuclear should be part of the state's future energy mix.
He said he would be happy to host both a nuclear power plant and nuclear waste dump in the Hunter, subject to public consultation.
"The Labor government run the three-eyed fish narrative, which is the low-resolution politics we should expect," Mr Newman said.
"I've worked very closely with the entire nuclear supply chain. I know how well and effectively it is all managed."
This red state may be as MAGA as they come, but its Republicans leaders, voters, and businesses have no interest in the president’s war on renewable energy.
Maybe investment bankers aren't into the right sort of green anymore ...
Anyway, can't we become more like RFK's America?
Think of the evolutionary benefits ...
Sheesh, in all that excitement, the pond clean forgot about Polonius and his fears. Back to the drudgery ...as Polonius seems to yearn for the glory days of the DLP, what with their well-informed members and supporters just loving themselves some fundamentalist tykery ...
Since the end of World War II, the two most successful minor parties have been the avowedly anti-communist Democratic Labor Party and the avowedly far-left Greens. And now, entering from the right, is Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party. As Hanson made clear in the News24 documentary The Fight for the Right, presented by Chris Kenny, she has two political aims. First, for One Nation to achieve government. Second, for the Anthony Albanese-led Labor Party to lose office. The question is whether a high One Nation vote is consistent with a Labor defeat. And the answer resides in preferences. Importantly, The Fight for the Right was fair and balanced. Kenny gave time to, and asked challenging questions of, Hanson along with the leaders of the Coalition. Namely, Liberal Party leader Angus Taylor and Nationals leader Matt Canavan. The One Nation leader received the most airtime since she is creating more news than any other political figure right now. The latest Newspoll has Labor with a primary vote of 29 per cent, One Nation also on 29 per cent, with the Coalition on 18 per cent and the Greens on 14 per cent. There is still considerable time to the next federal election and political circumstances can change before then. The initial task for the Coalition is to get ahead of One Nation on primary votes. Moreover, no one knows how the teals and other independents will go. Likewise with any micro parties that choose to run candidates. The DLP, which broke away from/was expelled by the ALP in the mid-1950s, had well-informed members and supporters. Most DLP voters had traditionally voted ALP, but after the Labor Split they directed their preferences to the Coalition ahead of Labor. DLP preferences kept Labor out of office until December 1972 and played a crucial role in the Coalition’s victories in 1955, 1961 and 1969. Greens shift The Greens emerged in the 90s as a separate party with an environmental agenda under the leadership of Bob Brown – it has since moved further to the left. It’s fair to say that Labor is more hostile to the Greens than to the Coalition. But Greens voters are far more hostile to the Coalition than Labor. Like the DLP, the Greens have well-informed members and supporters. It is estimated that around 90 per cent of DLP first preferences went to the Coalition before the party went out of existence in the mid-70s. Psephologist Antony Green has estimated, using Australian Electoral Commission figures, that 88 per cent of Greens preferences went to Labor in 2025. Whereas only 75 per cent of One Nation preferences went to the Coalition. That’s a significant, and perhaps result-determining, figure. In The Fight for the Right, Kenny put it to Hanson that she “must be worried that by splitting the right-of-centre vote” One Nation might help Labor stay in power in Victoria. The reference was to the Victorian state election to be held on November 28. Hanson rejected the claim. She said “if you want to get rid of Labor, then you vote One Nation No. 1 and then you put Libs No. 2”. Well, that’s fine in theory. But not if, say, 25 per cent of One Nation voters in Victoria preference Labor over the Coalition. That might return the incompetent Labor government in Victoria. So far One Nation voters have not shown the preference discipline of the DLP or Greens voters.
Sorry, that's a terribly long gobbet without any visual distractions, and eventually the reptiles broke, but only so they could feature a genuine dullard ... One Nation MP David Farley MP during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
News Corp the most reliable booster of Gina's pet?
Who'd have thunk it, but it might help explain Polonius's paranoid prattling, because it seems that One Nation voters are as discerning as DLP voters, what with Gina's pet being terribly clever, except she's apparently not...(don't ask the pond to follow all the twists in this mouse tail):
In The Australian last Tuesday, Anthony Galloway reported that the left-wing GetUp organisation – which likes to be called “progressive” – will spend at least $600,000 on campaigning against One Nation in five Labor-held seats in Melbourne. It is likely to be as successful as its failed attempt to defeat One Nation in the Farrer by-election last May. The polls indicate that the One Nation vote surged between early December last year and early February this year. This period takes in the Bondi Beach massacre of December 14. The evidence suggests that there has been a strong reaction to the terrorist attack aimed at the Australian Jewish community as part of Australian society in general. Moreover many Australians, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney, are angry at the disruption caused by constant protest marches against Israel’s defensive war in Gaza. The marches have disrupted life for many without any consequence at home or abroad. One Nation, so far, is the principal political beneficiary of the radical Islam-radical left unity ticket. And then there is the cost of living. Hanson did not come to politics with a high level of education but she is clever, with an ability to cut through in a way that is intellectually unfashionable but popular. Asked by Kenny if she was intolerant of any group, Hanson responded, without equivocation, that she was “really intolerant of radical Islam”. Hanson added that she did not like the suppression of women and more besides. Hanson is stubborn and declined to reconsider or withdraw her 1996 ill-informed statement that “we are in danger of being swamped by Asians”. She has yet to articulate a coherent economic policy. And then there is the lack of party discipline. Few Australians would have heard of David Farley before he was the successful One Nation candidate in the Farrer by-election. This week he declared he was making the party worthy of government and explicitly disagreed with his leader on immigration. It’s not a good sign with respect to party unity. There is talent in One Nation’s ranks – including Barnaby Joyce MP and the party’s director James Ashby. But it does not present as fit for government. Unlike the Coalition with experienced and talented politicians such as Taylor and Canavan in leadership roles. However, One Nation could possibly attain minority government status. Or it could ensure Labor’s continuation in office if its preferences leak substantially to Labor. The DLP and the Greens managed to keep their preferred parties in office by disciplined preference flows while winning seats in the Senate. One Nation will win Senate seats and probably attain some victories in the House of Representatives at the next federal election. But it’s also capable of returning a Labor government for a third term. Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.
Barners, Tamworth's ineradicable, undying, eternal shame presents as talent?
And Polonius has kind words for the beefy boofhead and the Canavan caravan?
Here's the thing. The reptiles have, with their incessant attacks and relentless promotion of far right policies, and their many invocations of Pauline, done wonders for the promotion, enabling and facilitation of One Nation, the furriner bashing party of Murdochian dreams.
Desperate times in WA and elsewhere. No wonder Polonius is having an anxiety attack, and so is the pond ...
Now to another reptile sent by the pond to the intermittent archive ...
The rush to demonise all boys and men in the wake of scandals at the Sydney Swans and Scots College isn’t only insulting, it’s corrosive.
By Gemma Tognini
Columnist
The pond realises sending grating Gemma to the archive cornfield is wrong.
After all, it's a heart-warming tale and the pond simply couldn't move past the amazing artwork (appallingly not credited to a living reptile), which heralded the start of the show ...
Domestic violence is a serious problem which impacts many NSW families. In 2021-22 an estimated 1.5 per cent of Australian women aged 18 years and over experienced violence by an intimate partner in the past 12 months. It is estimated that 1 in 4 women (27%), and 1 in 8 men (12%) in Australia experienced violence by an intimate partner or family member since the age of 15 years.
But it's okay, garrulous Gemma can walk the streets safe at night, and a single anecdote will always triumph over data ...
And so to the new reptile favourite ...
The header: Green scheme has a billion-dollar secret; The true cost of Australia’s energy transition from parliamentary oversight is being shrouded.
Could there ever be a reptile story about renewable energy without a snap of dastardly windmills, of the kind designed to send Don Quixote and the beefy boofhead into a panic? Of course not: Wind turbines at Granville Harbour on Tasmania's west coast. Picture: Philip Young
Guess what that featured as an opening image? You didn't have to guess, did you? Those damned things that haunt Don Quixote and the beefy boofhead and mad king Donald too:
The pond would have liked to feature all of it, what with Zoe making a fair fist of becoming the reptile replacement for the Bjørn-again one...
Suffice to say that in her new outing, Zoe remains as gloomy as ever.
The wall of secrecy surrounding the cost of the federal government’s flagship renewables subsidy scheme may finally be about to crack. The Australian National Audit Office has officially listed the Capacity Investment Scheme as part of its work program for 2026-27. As one of the least transparent federal subsidy schemes devised, the CIS is long overdue for an audit. The government has faced sustained scrutiny over its decision not to reveal the cost of the scheme, which will commit taxpayers to paying unknown billions to wind, solar and battery developers under 20-year revenue underwriting agreements. Until now, the Energy Minister has used the “commercial-in-confidence” claim as a get-out-of-jail-free card to continue evading every inconvenient question about how much taxpayers will have to pay. Energy ministers running similar programs in other countries have shown far more transparency. Britain, for instance, regularly publishes the strike price of its agreements with developers, as well as the estimated annual budget impact of its Contracts for Difference scheme. In Australia, the public is told neither. The length of CIS contracts makes the secrecy much worse. Once signed, these deals will be very difficult for a future government to unwind if they fail to deliver value for money. Of course, that’s all part of the plan. Last year, Chris Bowen made very clear what his task was for this term of government: “I want this transition to be so locked in that a change of government can’t stop it.” If this transition is such a good idea, then why must its price tag be kept secret? The lengths the government has gone to in avoiding transparency should be ringing alarm bells for taxpayers everywhere. Instead of being run through a government department – as is standard practice for subsidy programs of this magnitude – the CIS is being run through a private company: AusEnergy Services Limited. ASL does not front Senate estimates. In other words, the body responsible for assessing and recommending billion-dollar CIS projects for ministerial approval is not directly accountable to parliament. Nor is ASL subject to Freedom of Information requests in the way government departments are. And any attempt to request documents the department receives from ASL can be effortlessly knocked back with claims of confidentiality. Appointing a private company to administer a tender process worth billions of dollars is so unusual that perhaps the only other example of this occurring is the NSW Government’s Long-Term Energy Service Agreements scheme, which is also run by ASL. But at least in NSW the outsourcing of the LTESA scheme came with a statutory framework and regulatory oversight. The federal government opted for neither in its design of the CIS. This highly unusual arrangement not only forces taxpayers to sign contracts blindfolded, it also erodes public trust in the ministers who lead our country. Suppose a minister were accused of approving underwriting for an uneconomic project that benefited his friends. How could he prove his innocence? Under the current design, there is no accountability mechanism that would let him. If ministers want to maintain the trust of the public and ensure they cannot be accused of favouritism or corruption, they must embrace transparency and robust oversight – not use private companies and commercial-in-confidence claims to shield their decisions from scrutiny. But beyond the matter of governance, an important question remains. Even the CSIRO, which insisted for years that wind and solar were the cheapest forms of new energy, has conceded the transition to renewables will increase the cost of our energy system. Is the Australian public willing to bear that cost? The answer appears to be no. Polling commissioned by Affordable Energy Australia found more than half of Australians would not pay a single extra dollar to achieve net zero, and almost three-quarters wouldn’t pay more than $50 a year. Among communities bearing the brunt of the energy transition, willingness to pay is even lower. Another poll commissioned by Affordable Energy Australia found two-thirds of Gippsland would not pay a single extra dollar to make the transition move faster and four in five wouldn’t pay more than $50 a year. These results suggest that once the true scale of the CIS is revealed, very few taxpayers will be in favour of such costly contracts being signed on their behalf. Australians may support the idea of the energy transition in theory but they do not support the reality: ever-growing bills, secretive subsidies and the destruction of prime agricultural land and pristine rainforests. Consumers want cheap and reliable power first and foremost, not ideological targets. Our government would do well to heed the words of German Energy Minister Katherina Reiche, who wrote earlier this year: “One fact has been suppressed for too long: an energy transition that ignores system costs will ruin the country it claims to save.” Zoe Hilton is a spokeswoman for the Affordable Energy Australia campaign.
You're welcome Nepalese people.
We'll do our very best to shrink your glaciers and produce disasters, because think of the unhappy alternatives for long-suffering folk down under.
That said, the pond was most disappointed that Zoe didn't go the nuke option this time ... and it has to be said that there's a certain repetitiousness to her offerings.
Here was the way she wrapped up her first outing, and it sounded just like her second bleat, with a faux bit of alleged data setting the Zoe pace, and the use of "rent-seekers", suggesting she's learned her reptile lexicon well ...
...Destroying the environment to save it is nonsensical. At 1 per cent of global emissions, Australia does not have any control over our own climate. What we do have control over is the direct impacts we have on our environment at the local level.
We need a rethink of our approach to environmental policy. For every industrial project, there is a trade-off between its economic benefits and the effects it has on the environment.
Wind farms are not providing the predicted net economic benefits to Australia. In fact, they are often a net cost to society as they cannot survive without ever-growing subsidies. On top of that, many are destroying the environment they were meant to preserve. Yet the federal government still plans to more than double the amount of wind capacity in the eastern grid by 2050.
It is clearer than ever that governments’ renewables targets cannot help secure cheap energy for Australia, nor will they preserve our unique natural heritage.
Australian families and businesses deserve better. It is time Australia’s leaders stop pretending the current paradigm is working. They must prioritise affordable, reliable energy so our energy system serves the needs of all Australians – not just the rent-seekers profiting off the public purse.
And with that the pond turned to the lizard Oz editorialist to help Zoe out ...
There you go, Zoe, you need to drag in a Prof, but for that you'll have to be up on your Quadrant reading, with Gazza ranting away in No Laughing Matter ... (the pond guarantees correspondents will love the portrait of Jimbo, showing the reptiles how they really should be using AI):
You see Zoe? You needed to slip in a kind word about coal, and wonder why we ever abandoned the dinkum, clean, virginal, mainstay Oz variety.
Nepalese people, you're welcome ...
And as the pond gave the lizard Oz editorialist one shot, how about another, what with rampant Zionism all the go in this weekend's Oz.
Showing off the lizard Oz editorialist was a way for the pond to avoid covering all the other stuff in the rag ...
With that done, there was just time to do a little migrant bashing, proving that the lizard Oz editorialist right on top of this particular reptile jihad could more than match Pauline at this game...
Does that mean we can ban foreign citizens like the Murdochs, plundering the hive mind with their US owned companies? Or are they so skilled at plundering that they should always be welcome?
The pond suspects that you could count on two hands the number of people who read the lizard Oz editorialist, but herpetology students should remember it's at the heart of the darkness...
And now with Xmas just around the corner - Spring is sprunging - how go things in the disunited States?
Splendid stuff, time for the usual updates ...
What a relief not to hear it pronounced "Moskowww". And fun fact, "Coat of many colours" was Dolly's favourite child ...
Reading that sub heading, a member of the hive mind might have thought that yet again climate change was a non-starter. Other issues mentioned, with climate change carefully excluded.
But the reptiles couldn't exclude it from the borrowed text:
...This was not a ‘natural’ disaster. Nothing about it was natural – not the glacier melting due to greenhouse gas build-up due to fossil fuel burning, not the location of expensive hydropower plants on trans-Himalayan rivers, not designing highways to follow rivers, not the settlements that have grown around them, not the corruption and greed, not the poor governance.
Say what? Greenhouse gas build-up due to fossil fuel burning!!
And again ...
...Early warning will be of no help if homes are located right next to rivers flowing down from the world’s youngest and most seismically-active mountain range, now feeling the full impact of the climate crisis.
There's a climate crisis? There is: The full impact of the climate crisis!!
And again ...
A culture of fatalism can explain the lack of interest in preparedness for disaster that we know will happen, and with greater frequency in future. But that is no excuse. Even if previous governments ignored this, Nepal’s new administration with its technocrats and PhDs must take measures to address seismic and climate co-hazards. Winston Churchill once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” This disaster also offers the chance for Prime Minister Balendra Shah and his government to demonstrate a proactive approach in search, rescue, rehabilitation and a preparedness strategy for the future.
Give up the addiction to coal? Prepare for the hazards of climate change?!!
Make what use of it you can, because it's unlikely you're going to read that sort of stuff in the lizard Oz anytime soon.
Not once did yesterday's reptile rolling coverage dare to mention "climate" or "science" or "climate change"...
And this morning's coverage studiously avoided mentioning any possible cause ....
WAITING GAME Water, then torture: families’ haunting vigil after Nepal flood Nepal’s glacial tsunami disaster has left 38 Australians missing, with authorities warning the death toll could make it Australia’s worst foreign tragedy since the 2002 Bali bombings. By Amanda Hodge
Just below that was a personal interest story, but neither the updated version, nor the earlier archived version dared to mention climate change:
Sonia Wales' Nepal Times story remained up early in the morning, but it will soon be swept away, with the rag made safe once again for its Ughmanns and Borgs and Lloydies of the Amazon ...
Meanwhile, the reptiles continued their work for the Australian Daily Zionist News ...
INQUIRER Anti-Israel agenda bolstered when crucial questions remain unasked ‘Opportunity lost’ as antisemitism inquiry avoids questioning key anti-Israel figures The antisemitism royal commission has wrapped its hearings without calling a single hate preacher or anti-Israel protester to give evidence.
By Stephen Rice
Here's a crucial question that remains unanswered.
Why were people in Israel shocked by the sight of a donkey tortured by being dragged to its death behind an ATV, when the routine of ethnic cleansing goes on daily in the West Bank and Gaza? Israelis Only See the Victim When It's a Donkey
The mission the soldiers were asked to carry out was unusual from the very first moment, even before things escalated and weapons were drawn. It was called a "coordinated activity" in the Khan Yunis area. The coordinators were Israeli soldiers serving in the Gaza Strip and members of an armed Palestinian militia opposed to Hamas. But the word "coordination" is misleading in this context. The soldiers had no idea what they were walking into. Only in retrospect did they realize they were witnessing an arbitration mechanism following a dispute within one of the militias operating in Gaza. "One of the clan members with us had apparently accidentally shot another gunman's wife," an IDF combat soldier familiar with the incident told Haaretz. "Before our eyes, right there, the price was set, and the other man simply shot him in the legs. Everyone around accepted it as if it were a legitimate verdict. We stood there in complete shock."
Do go on ...
And so on, and the pond isn't here to enable facilitate or enable Zionism in the lizard Oz, and blames the BBC, which has of late been cranking up its coverage of the ethnic cleansing, which inevitably turns up on the ABC's news channels...
Enough already, and the pond looked deeper, and stumbled across yet another sample of Ughmann climate science denialism.
The header: From migration to energy, signs One Nation rise is having a material effect on Labor policies; History repeats for Chris Bowen, whose data centre mandate has collapsed.
The caption for a typical snap of glum, evil, threatening despots, or so the Ughmann sees them: PM Anthony Albanese dumped Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s renewable data centre rule after Queensland revolt. Picture: Dan Peled / NewsWire
As well as spending a bigly amount of time bashing furriners, the Ughmann was wildly excited and triumphant about the prospects of the Queensland and NT governments supporting big tech and data centres and to hell with sustainability ...
First up the furriner bashing, which harks back to the happy days when everybody was fitting out Juliar for a chaff bag ...
As High Court defeats go, it was a pretty spectacular fail. In 2011 the Gillard government was desperately trying to stem the flow of asylum-seeker boats that exploded after Labor dismantled the Howard-era Pacific Solution border-protection system. To dress this self-inflicted wound, Chris Bowen, then immigration minister, crafted a cunning plan dubbed the Malaysian Solution. This envisaged transferring up to 800 people who arrived by boat to Malaysia while accepting 4000 recognised refugees from that nation for resettlement here. It borrowed the central logic of the Howard scheme: people arriving irregularly by boat would be denied processing and settlement in Australia.
The reptiles backed this up with an amorphous snap, Julia Gillard announced the Malaysian Solution in 2011, a deal in which Australia would send 800 asylum-seekers to Malaysia in return for 4000 bona fide refugees.
The pond took the trouble to do an image search, and whaddya kno, that very same snap was deployed by the NY Times way back in June 2009...
Not to worry, sloppy labelling is the least of the reptile thought crimes ...
When a court challenge slapped a restraining order on the minister’s plan, the matter was dispatched to the High Court. Bowen oozed his trademark confidence in banking the win before the case was heard. “The (Immigration) Act is clear that a third country can be declared, and that the minister can declare that third country, and we have followed the act to the letter,” he said. Bowen’s declaration went down 6-1 and the court permanently restrained the government from transferring the asylum-seekers to Malaysia. In the smoking ruin of defeat, Bowen called the judgment “profoundly disappointing” and suggested the court had indulged in judicial activism. “What the High Court has decided today is not what was previously considered as understood and accepted law,” Bowen said.
How desperate did this get? The reptiles had to resort to an aged 'toon ...Nicholson cartoon
The pond guesses that the reptiles must dwell in a long lost golden age of Labor bashing because it looks pretty grim these days for the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way ...
Recall that this was a Band-Aid political fix on the artery Labor punctured when it abolished the Pacific Solution. That deliberately harsh regime had become a totemic target for the party in the lead-up to the 2007 election. In the eyes of true believers, it was not just bad policy – it was evil. Abolishing it was an act of performative morality. In 2008 Chris Evans, Labor’s immigration minister at the time, basked in the glow of adoration that radiated from the serried ranks of the righteous in a speech to the Refugee Council. “Abolishing the Pacific Solution … was one of the first things the Rudd Labor government did on taking office,” Evans said. “It was also one of my greatest pleasures in politics. Neither humane nor fair, the Pacific Solution was also ineffective and wasteful.” Labor never grasped that a tough border regime was what gave government the licence to run a large migration program without provoking a public backlash. Australians would accept mass migration so long as they believed the borders were controlled and the program orderly. Nor did Labor understand that many recent migrants, who had waited their turn and come through the front door, had little sympathy for those they regarded as queue jumpers. Governing is not a morality play. Policies should be judged by what they do, not by how virtuous they make their authors feel. Sometimes the national interest demands choices that offend the prevailing elite orthodoxy. Borders define nations and Australia cannot fix the world.
There came another snap ...Asylum seekers arrive at Christmas Island, 2012.
Whatever, asylum seekers look pretty much the same to the reptiles at the lizard Oz, deviants seeking to destroy the hive mind way of life ...
The realisation that it had made a monumental mistake dawned slowly but, when it did, Labor bungee-jumped off the moral high ground. In politics, principle is usually roadkill when it collides with survival. As it raced towards electoral oblivion in 2013, Labor dumped Julia Gillard as leader, rebooted Kevin Rudd to save the furniture, and set about systematically replacing every brick in the Pacific Solution wall. The offshore processing regime pioneered in the Howard era is the system that is in place today and it now enjoys bipartisan support.
After that bout of triumphalist wandering down past times, the Ughmann turned to the present and the need to use coal, gas and nukes, to make the world safe for tech bros, data centres and AI:
All of this flooded back when Bowen declared at the National Press Club in early August that the federal government would decree that all new data centres run on a mix of wind, solar, batteries and a touch of back-up gas. That mix would be set in stone. “If a data centre is proposed to only use gas, it will not meet the minimum national standards and it won’t be allowed to register, and it will not be able to proceed,” Bowen said. Once again, performative morality was dictating policy. In the creed to which Bowen pledges obeisance there are virtuous sources of energy and sinful ones. What matters most is not cost, utility or dispatchability but ideological purity. But there are now some infidels in the state and territory pews.
Cue a snap of the beast looking his usual, comical self... Energy Minister Chris Bowen appearing at the National Press Club. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
This is a difficult sell for the reptiles ...
... but the Ughmann was more than up for the job ...
Queensland and the Northern Territory, which are awash with gas, dared to dissent from the Bowen doctrine, so he threatened to use a big stick to beat the apostates into submission. He would legislate the energy mix for data centres. “The Constitution is pretty clear about any conflict between commonwealth legislation and state legislation, and which legislation prevails,” Bowen said. Here Bowen was betting that, if push came to shove, the High Court would back him in. The language he used on the clarity of the law was an eerie echo from the past and experience has not mellowed his hubris. Once again he was banking a win before the race began. The federal government can ride roughshod over the NT, but Queensland is a tougher constitutional nut to crack. Then there is the tricky politics of picking a fight with a state historically hostile to edicts from Canberra and usually pretty adept at mobilising a maroon tide of discontent. So, the Queensland Premier went into this week’s national cabinet geared up for a fight with the federal government. David Crisafulli was pitching his own framework for data centre approval: compulsory local consultation, rules over water use, and no wind and solar mandates. His hand was strengthened by Queensland’s unusually tight grip on its electricity system, with the state owning the major transmission and distribution networks and much of its generating capacity.
Let's hear it for a pollie who can't look beyond his short term navel ... Queensland Premier David Crisafulli and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese were at odds over data centre energy policy. Picture: Adam Head
Make way for the supine pollies and reptiles helping out the tech bros ...
What happened next is now mired in extraordinary confusion. Queensland and the NT emerged from National Cabinet declaring victory. Crisafulli’s team called the deal “the Queensland exemption” and multiple media outlets reported that Queensland would be allowed to power data centres with gas or coal. The agreement on national standards did not specify what energy sources data centres would be required to use. In the post-cabinet press conference price trumped generation sources on Anthony Albanese’s checklist: “I certainly understand that different states have different issues, but we know that the priority is keeping our energy costs low,” Albanese said. Crisafulli said Queensland was happy to sign on to a national framework that ensured communities had a say in projects and didn’t dictate energy sources. “We believe that we can control our data sovereignty, protect the rights of local communities, and enable that energy mix to bring those data centres on,” he said. The Northern Territory also claimed victory, believing it was free to build data hubs running off the gas that is about to flow from the massive Beetaloo Basin project. Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro says the Basin could power Australia for the next 200 years and left the cabinet meeting declaring it “will be online within days”. But, as this column was going to press on Friday, Bowen emphatically declared there was no exemption at all.
Time for a snap of the key villain ... Anthony Albanese wants to keep the AI boom going without the growing pains. Picture: John Feder
Stuff the environment? Relax, it's just "growing pains" ...
“We will, as we indicated, legislate binding national standards for data centres across the country without exception, which will require 100% renewables backed by firming, which can be gas,” he told Renew Economy. Bowen said Queensland and the Territory could make a case for a different energy mix but the Australian Energy Regulator would decide whether it was cheaper than renewables. “It is not a carveout, not an exemption, not an ability to use fossil fuels without the express permission of the Commonwealth.” So who won National Cabinet? At deadline Queensland and Canberra appeared to have fundamentally different understandings of what they had agreed. Perhaps Bowen’s threatened constitutional showdown is back on after all. Watch this space. If Bowen wins it will be another spectacular act of economic self harm. Because artificial intelligence is forcing a change of political focus worldwide. This is a novel and unsettling technology. There is a ghost in this mind machine and it haunts us all. Depending on your preferred expert it represents an extraordinary opportunity, an existential threat or both. Whichever it proves to be, we are now in an information arms race moving at light speed. Australia must be in that race because experience tells us AI will be developed for good and ill, and what can be built somewhere will eventually threaten everywhere.
It wouldn't be a lizard Oz story without the presence of the Canavan "coal matters" caravan ... Nationals Leader Matt Canavan says the “ridiculous idea of net zero” needs to be scrapped. It would be one of many initiatives from the party aimed at lifting economic performance and boosting productivity. “We have a job to convince people in the next couple of years that we have a plan to restore confidence in our economy,” he said. Mr Canavan told Sky News Australia the Nationals have “got a plan to lower taxes to make sure inflation doesn’t erode your budget every year”. “We have got a plan to use all our energy resources and scrap this ridiculous idea of net zero. “We have a great nation, and I want to offer hope to people.”
Sheesh, he's still talking to Sky Noise down under? There never was a re-brand?
Happy days ... everybody needs a data centre ...
And so to a final poignant cry ...
This race runs on abundant energy, turning electrons into intelligence at industrial scale. Other nations racing to build AI are not burdened by guilt over energy sources. They are reaching for every electron they can get. In the US, planned gas-fired capacity tied directly to data centres has soared to 189 gigawatts, roughly 2½ times the installed capacity of Australia’s entire eastern electricity market. Microsoft has signed a 20-year deal to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island and Meta is locking up nuclear power of its own. China builds more wind and solar than any other nation but almost 70 per cent of the electricity consumed by its data centres comes from coal and it is testing a truck-mounted nuclear reactor. That’s in addition to the 150 large-scale reactors it intends to build. This is what an energy arms race looks like. The US is reaching for gas and resurrecting nuclear reactors; China is using coal, gas, nuclear, wind and solar. Nobody serious is entering this contest powered by wind, solar and batteries alone. Nationals leader Matt Canavan said it was high time Australian governments realised the real cost of net zero would be how much industry we can hold and attract. “If we are spending billions bailing out aluminium smelters because electricity is too expensive, why would it be different for data centres?” Canavan said. “And if data centres are what they are cracked up to be, then net zero goes from fantasy to impossibility.” This column has said many times that the world is not doing net zero because there is a chasm between what nations say in climate communiques and what they do. Last year global fossil-fuel consumption hit another record and carbon emissions rose again. I don’t celebrate that. It’s just an inconvenient truth. Australia has abundant coal, gas, wind and solar and around a third of the world’s uranium. To deliberately rule most of that out and attempt to run AI as a three-legged race is not a plan for victory. It is unilateral disarmament. In that race, we lose.
Lucky Nepalese. The Ughmann is doing his very best to make sure you can go on losing bigly ...but it just might be a tough sell ...
John Birmingham in his quaintly named Substack, Alien Sideboob, pretty much said everything that will likely be said about the coming lizard Oz response under the header The Reckoning. Inter alia ...
...Ruth Gamble, a climate historian and director of La Trobe Asia, who has studied Tibet and Himalayan rivers for more than a decade, made it into the ABC’s reporting this morning. She’s in Kathmandu right now and was set to go through the border pass that was just destroyed. Gamble can cite instances of titanic floods and massive landslides going back millennia, but says they are more common now. “Everyone can see, even non-scientists can see, that there’s melting glaciers and melting ice and there’s less snow and more rain and the rain’s coming down faster all across the mountains. The conditions and the type of precipitation that’s falling in the mountains are all changing so fast that denying that it’s climate change takes a willful act to ignore all of the evidence.” So, she got the memo, but by close of business another memo will have arrived on desks in Houston and London and on the highest floors of those towers in Sydney and Melbourne, where Australia’s own multibillion-dollar fossil fuel companies plot their infernal schemes. That memo does not change. It orders that doubt be manufactured, that The Method be deployed again, a bastard cousin of the scientific method that the tobacco industry deployed for decades to deny, to evade, to create uncertainty in order to keep selling a product the industry already knew killed people. Of course, they’ll be cursing it in private, the damnable bad luck of having so many wealthy white tourists die screaming in such shareable video. That sucks for them because we would have all forgotten this by Monday if the thousand killed had been poor, and brown, and local to the mountain that killed them. We think of death as the great leveller, but the dead have never been equal. Grief and remembrance enjoy much better production values when the deceased look like the commissioning editor. One last thing. I’ll put good folding money on the table right now and tell you that someone will put a microphone in front of Albanese or someone like him, in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, to ask “Was this a result of climate change?” And whoever is asked will respond, with a peevish frown and censorial tone, “Now is not the time to talk about that sort of thing.” Quite right too. Twenty years ago was the time to talk about this shit, and people did. We’ve known this was coming for decades. We know what the companies and their captive governments knew, and we understand that they pressed on, regardless. That mountain did not thaw and fall because these things just happen sometimes. It fell because projections were filed, understood, and set aside in favour of quarterly returns. It fell because the reckoning is here.
As usual, the pond had to send snappy Tom to the archive ...
Rhetoric v reality check: Albo’s reform talk falls flat at BCA Anthony Albanese has now addressed the Business Council of Australia five times, yet business leaders say Australia still cannot tax or regulate its way to prosperity. By Tom Dusevic Columnist
The pond only needs the economic advice of Dame Groan ... a teaser trailer sampling should be more than enough to see if a visit to the intermittent archive was required ...
There's a lot more, but the pond needed some light relaxation, and the bromancer came along to deliver the goods ... he was on his usual rampage, and the pond always has to make room for him, especially as he opened with a dash of Shelley ...
Strange, and never mind the layout, the pond knows that poem in a different context.
Hey ho, hey nonny no, on we go ...
...It’s worth pausing to marvel at this monstrosity of Australian public policy, which continues the fabulous, hallucinatory dysfunction that animates defence policy, which has left Australia more completely dependent on the US for security than at any time since World War II. The Australian navy surface fleet has never been older, nor weaker, than in this time, which, as the government often proclaims, presents the most dangerous strategic circumstances since 1945. Our surface combatants are seven remaining Anzac-class frigates, small, elderly, barely armed; and three air warfare destroyers. Only the AWDs have the remotest claim to being modern warships. Way back in the 2009 defence white paper, which should have been entered for the Miles Franklin best work of fiction prize, we decided to replace the Anzacs pretty damn fast. Moving at lightning speed, by 2016 we had a project: to build nine new frigates to replace the eight Anzacs, at a total cost of $30bn. At the navy’s urging, we decided on specialist anti-submarine warfare frigates.
There's a real awkwardness to the bromancer's pitch.
For decades he and the reptiles at large have been extolling the benefits of the US alliance, the glories of Pine Gap, the comfort and security offered, and then along came mad king Donald, showing where his heart truly lies ...
Is there a further irony?
The Hunter-class frigate progam was announced by Malware back in June 2018, with the able support of Marise Payne, Minister for Defence, and "Poodle" Pyne, Minister for Defence Industry, and now we're stuck with the boondoggle, at a time when drone warfare has revolutionised battlefields on sea and land ... As the Hunter has progressed, not in the physical world but on paper and in digital imagination, it has gobbled up a lot of money, about $8bn so far. Picture: BAE
The important thing is to forget this ancient history ... and moan about what the Liberal government produced without attaching any blame to actual Liberals, or even the reptiles themselves...
The navy and Defence acquisition machinery were told to choose a mature design already in service and to make minimal modifications. Instead, it chose the British BAE Type 26 frigate. Far from being a mature design, the Type 26, even today, eight years later, is not yet in service in the British navy. That’s right, the government was told the Type 26 was a mature design and it’s not in service eight years later. If that’s a mature design, I am my grandfather’s uncle. Then, having been told to make minimal changes, Defence and the navy added so much new stuff that it went from 8800 tonnes to 10,500 tonnes, as my colleague Cameron Stewart revealed. Yet it still has the Type 26 propulsion system. As analyst Marcus Hellyer observes, you can’t increase the weight by a quarter without losing significant range and speed. Naturally, the Albanese government decided to abandon navy support and supply ships that would give our surface combatants greater range. As the Hunter has progressed, not in the physical world but on paper and in digital imagination, it has gobbled up a lot of money, about $8bn so far. By 2021 the estimated cost had blown out to $45bn. In 2023 the Australian National Audit Office produced a report so scathing, so frankly unbelievable in the bad process and wishful thinking it exposed, it was a kind of bureaucracy nightmare porn. Yes, Prime Minister on a heroin trip. It should have been titled 5000 Shades of Grey.
How happy and proud the reptiles were way back when ...
Grand days, and now, petty, parochial poseurs and grandstanders are all the go ... South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas takes a selfie with the crowd assembled for the Hunter-class frigate keel laying ceremony at Osborne Naval Shipyard. Picture: James Elsby
The bromancer maintained his rage ...
This led the government to consider killing the Hunters, which of course it should have done. Instead it cut the order from nine to six. But it has contracted for only three (hopefully the madness ends there). These three are now budgeted at a staggering $27bn, $9bn each, making them among the most expensive ships, with least bang for buck, in human history. The first is scheduled to be delivered in 2032, which means it might go into service in 2034. If you think that $27bn figure will hold, you want to check who’s drugging your coffee. So a mature design in 2018, for a mere frigate, is going to cost nearly $30bn to deliver just three, 20 years later. It’s a good thing this was an urgent project. I’d hate to see Defence taking their time. The Hunter is a weird ship for our navy. It has only 32 vertical launch system cells with which to defend itself or inflict damage on any other surface ship. Modern warships of its size tend to have 96 to 112 VLS cells, though big destroyers can have many more. Former chief of the navy, Vice-Admiral David Shackleton, commented: “The Hunters aren’t powerful enough ships for what the navy needs.” In time, but not yet, unmanned ships, acting as VLS trucks, will become more important. Even our AWDs, which would be described as frigates, not destroyers, anywhere but Australia, have only 48 vertical cells. The Hunter’s defenders claim the VLS number doesn’t matter because you don’t hunt subs with vertical cells. True enough. If Australia had a surface fleet of 40 vessels, a few specialising in anti-submarine warfare might be worthwhile. But in what possible military context could the Hunter actually be used to hunt and destroy a Chinese nuclear submarine?
At this point the reptiles discovered there had been a brand change ... The Australian Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan condemns Australia’s $27 billion plan for three new frigates, warning the vessels are becoming excessively expensive, heavy and potentially ineffective. “This is a ridiculous project, $27 billion for three frigates; these are the most expensive frigates in the history of the world,” Mr Sheridan told News24 host James Macpherson. “They are now ridiculous ships. “We’re going to get a slow, fat frigate.”
It's a disaster ...
As Michael Shoebridge of Strategic Analysis Australia points out, we’re asked to believe two contradictory propositions. Proposition one: nuclear-powered submarines are the apex predator of the seas, undetectable, unchallengeable. Proposition two: the Hunter frigate, chugging along underpowered and underarmed, can find and destroy any adversary submarine. The most effective anti-submarine warfare is conducted by other submarines. To have any chance at all a surface ship has to know in advance roughly where the sub it’s going after is located. Genuine anti-submarine combat is very complex, joint, nearly theatre-wide, involving attack submarines, convoy escorts, dedicated aircraft, helicopters, all in large numbers, and vast intelligence resources. There’s no way the Australian Defence Force, much less the navy, has the mass to provide that context to make dedicated specialist ASW surface ships credible or a good use of resources. We could have built three more AWDs, or indeed bigger ships, at a fraction of the Hunter costs and had them in the water by now. The heavy, ponderous Hunters will move more slowly than the nuclear subs they hunt. When trying to be quiet they will use electric propulsion, making them even slower. If they can detect a state-of-the-art sub, probably that sub can detect them. There’s only one context in which the Hunters make any sense. If a Hunter were deployed as a niche part of a big US operation, with the Americans providing all the protection, it might be a useful addition, at the margin, to US capability.
And after that mention of the US alliance, and helping out the US, there came a snap of a stray destroyer ...Air Warfare Destroyer HMAS Sydney.
... and the bromancer almost came to the nub of his problem...
The actual graphic didn't make it into the archive, so here's the winning...
And so on, and suddenly the bromancer is all for independence, maybe look after ourselves rather than rely on mad king Donald...
But the real design principle of the ADF is a secret hiding in plain sight, which ought occasionally to be named. The whole ADF is designed not for defence of Australia, nor dominance in our waters, or even really to add strategic weight to US-led deterrence. It’s designed so we can bid to be small but exquisite niche participants in US operations, thereby earning alliance credit. Thus we produce insanely expensive platforms in tiny numbers with no independent strategic weight. If we designed the ADF genuinely to have autonomous strategic weight, we’d have a chance of looking after ourselves if necessary and, paradoxically, we’d be more useful allies to the Americans. The Albanese government, like previous governments, only pretends to focus on defence of Australia. Nonetheless, it has made one good recent decision – to buy 11 Japanese Mogami-class frigates, much smaller than the Hunters, and vastly cheaper, but also with 32 VLS cells, lots of other weapons and a bigger range; and to get at least the first three built in Japan with absolutely minimal design change. The Albanese government won’t fund defence properly. It fraudulently pretends it can add nuclear submarines to an already woefully inadequate defence budget, which has not moved as a percentage of GDP, and not hollow out the ADF. In that context, imagine what you could do with a spare $27bn. As Shelley might have said: Look on my works, ye feeble, and despair.
Or you could look on the reptiles' tragic devotion to the alleged US alliance - even after all that the bromancer couldn't renounce it - and have a laugh along with Canadians ... Feuding Ally Plans Street Name Mocking TACO Trump
