By special request, hagiography to the max, Dame Slap grills Dame Beef ...

That shamelessly deceptive header?

t's a joke of course. 

Dame Slap doesn't grill Dame Beef, she waxes lyrical, she swoons at the sight of her, she shows all the passion you might expect in a Heathcliffian romance ...

She is the suck supreme ...

The header: She is Louise Clegg. He is Angus Taylor. She’s not the woman behind the man; Refusing to play the quiet political spouse to Liberal leader Angus Taylor, the constitutional lawyer has one rule: ‘I wasn’t going to shut up.’

The caption for the fetching snap: The wife of new Liberal leader Angus Taylor, Louise Clegg. She’s not the woman behind the man. Picture: Jane Dempster / The Australian

The pond usually likes to offer some critical or satirical commentary, as an add-on to the assorted offerings of reptile swill to herpetology students - a legitimate form of postgraduate study whereby all might earn their PhR's.

But sometimes nausea intervenes, and during the course of this 12 minute read - so the reptiles clocked it - the pond had to rush off to the toilet to upchuck a Technicolor yawn so many times that sensible comment entirely fled the mind ...

The pond even struggled to find the right sort of descriptor. Might it be called a great example of fawning sycophantic scribbling?

Did those few inadequate words sufficiently evoke the experience?

Whatever, no more splendid example of a hagiographic fawning and simpering has found its way into the pond in a long time, and all because a correspondent pleaded for Dame Slap to be given special treatment - and incidentally proving that Dame Slap has a heart as soft and as vulnerable as a marshmallow.

So sweet and tender and caring ... 

There is a Bogan River in Australia, of course. It’s in central NSW. On the banks of that river, just before Easter 37 years ago, a couple of country kids shared their first kiss. Not quite kids; she was 20, he was 22. But still, young.
She grew up on a farm near Tottenham, a small town in deep National Party country, west of Sydney, population back then of about 200 to 300 people.
He grew up on a farm near the small town of Nimmitabel, on the Great Dividing Range.
Her mother and father left school before they were 15. The first in her family to go to university, apart from an uncle, she was the eldest of six children, raised in a rowdy Anglican country family not shy about showing emotion.
He was one of four boys, both his parents were university-educated, and family life on their much larger country property was more reserved but equally unaffected.
She is Louise Clegg.
He is Angus Taylor.
Which means the man who wants to turf out the Albanese government is married to Clegg. She’s not the woman behind the man, as the outdated might say of spouses of men in big political jobs. Put it this way, if Taylor has a chance, it will help that he is married to Clegg.
The entire country knows the Liberals and Taylor, 59, elected leader in mid-February, have a gargantuan task on their hands. The Liberal Party copped more than a bloody nose from South Australian voters last weekend. The party lost limbs, recording their worst result. Taylor must confront not just the incumbent federal Labor government but also a nationally resurgent One Nation.

There was an abundance of splendid visual distractions, Louise Clegg and husband Angus Taylor with two of their four children.

The pond was still struggling for the right sort of descriptor.

Would servile obsequiousness do?

And whatever had happened to that much loved character, always determined to instil awe and respect into naughty children?

Sadly MIA, and even worse, the pond discovered in the latest movie adaptation, she was again disappeared and turned into Dame Snap (and even weirder, Kermode liked the movie).

Will anyone remember the grand, lost days of a jolly good slapping?

Never mind ... settle in, remember, this is a bigly 12 minutes, never to be recovered ...

“I’m not very interesting,” Clegg, 57, says a few times before we settle in for her first interview.
Nonsense.
Clegg is fascinating and funny, warm and smart, an astute political observer, thinker and writer. Clegg is also a no-nonsense mother of four, a highly respected former barrister and writer specialising in constitutional and administrative law. She is also a passionate campaigner for grassroots issues in the country.
A fine mind
Clegg speaks her mind – and it is a fine mind – even if that means stirring up the centre right of Australian politics. Last year she took on the so-called national conservatives who, she says, are copying and pasting right-wing American political trends.
“Conservatives in Australia have spent too long being deferential to the left’s cultural fashions. But the answer is not to imitate the left by building our own moralising state. We don’t need American nat-con cosplay – we need confident Australian conservatism: freedom, responsibility, pluralism, thrift, respect for institutions and confidence in ordinary Australians to build their own lives,” Clegg wrote in this newspaper in December last year.
Clegg also took aim at the hankering for tariff-driven protectionism: “The same one-size-fits-all nat-con posture extends to economics, where fawning over America First protectionism does not inspire confidence.”
Taylor read her piece for the first time the day it was published.
“Gus walked in the door and said, ‘That’ll ruffle a few feathers,’ ” Clegg tells Inquirer.
Whose feathers? Taylor didn’t say – and she won’t either. But it’s not hard to imagine.
It was early December, leadership rumblings were reaching fever pitch and some Coalition politicians appeared to be enamoured by American nativist politics, including tariffs and protectionism.
“Then he said, ‘I thought the economic part of it was strong.’ ”
Taylor knows more than your average political leader – including the current Treasurer and Prime Minister – about economics. His background is no secret: awarded the University of Sydney medal in economics, went to the University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar doing a postgraduate degree in economics, a highly successful businessman, the youngest person globally to be appointed partner at McKinsey.
It’s Clegg we want to know more about. Did she feel the need to run the piece by her politician husband before publishing?
“No,” she says.
Does she ever run pieces by him?
No, she says, just as fast.
Taylor had responded to only one other of her many published pieces.
“What are you doing?” Taylor said to his wife, after her first piece on the voice was published in August 2022. “It wasn’t accusatory. It was more like: what are you trying to achieve?” Clegg recalls.
‘I wasn’t going to shut up’: Going out on a limb for the voice
Clegg is unusual for many reasons, not least for her courage. She was the first barrister in the country to publicly buck the suffocating consensus of the nation’s legal community that supported the voice. Not many followed her.
“I said to Angus, you’re the politician. You do your thing. I’m a lawyer, I’ll do mine.”

Clegg went out on a limb because she was blown away by the radical nature of the model put forward by Indigenous activists and a small group of self-styled “conservative constitutional lawyers” whose proposal Clegg believed was anything but conservative. It would have entrenched, she says, “inequality of citizenship” in the nation’s founding document.

Another visual distraction ... Louise Clegg at Parkes District Court in 2017. She would later buck the legal community’s suffocating consensus on the Voice. Picture: Supplied

It reminded the pond in a nostalgic way of that onetime severe and stern character, here gone MIA ...

Such a sweet, kindly girl. It must have softened the old grouch's heart.

And yet the pond still struggled for the right sort of descriptor to evoke the experience.

Subservient, deferential, grovelling, toadying?

“I felt if I was to have any credibility within my profession, I had to put up an alternative model. I was totally swamped by people, by lawyers, saying: ‘Louise, keep going.’ ”
The former barrister did just that, continuing to propose a genuinely modest model in stark contrast to the radical one being put forward to Australians in the referendum.
Clegg does a wickedly good impersonation of Tony Abbott as she recalls the former prime minister ringing her to say the choice was binary, yes or no. That’s it.
She and Frank Brennan, a supporter of the voice, became great friends, engaging in entirely civil debates in churches and at other forums. She spoke at her old law firm Clayton Utz – one of the few law firms to accommodate both sides of a referendum debate that involved important legal changes to the nation’s Constitution.
“I managed to get traction,” she says. “But not with the NSW Bar Association. I offered that Frank and I would go to the Bar common room and give alternative views. I didn’t get a response. It was like they (barristers) were all told to shut up. That’s my view. And I wasn’t going to shut up.”
Meeting Angus: ‘He was good looking and worked hard’
Clegg’s feisty intellect was clear early on, even if her parents did not see university as her natural path after school.
“My father was a fundamentalist Christian and he still is. He thought that I’d become an atheist if I went to uni. He said: ‘Why don’t you go to TAFE in Dubbo,’ ” she says. “Until I got my HSC mark, and then he said: ‘Oh maybe you should go to uni.’ ”
The former altar girl did not become an atheist at university but she did meet a man with deep religious convictions. Clegg was in her freshman year when she first met Taylor one night at a pub near Sydney University.
He was more interested in a pretty friend of hers. But the young law student noticed him. “He was completely country,” Clegg says. “From the way he stood that night, to the clothes he wore and the crappy Baxter boots.”

So many visual treasures ... Angus Taylor, 19, on horseback in the Snowy Mountains near Kiandra, leading a group on a five-day horse ride. Picture: Supplied

And while Dame Slap had gone MIA, naughty children were roaming, wild-eyed and excited, and without the hint of a reprimand ...

What grotesque creature had turned up in Dame Slap's place, replacing severity and discipline with wild abandon?

Still the pond struggled to describe this new school.

Ingratiating, cringing, unctuous, oily, slimy?

Would "alkaline" conjure up the texture of wet fingers feeling all soapy and sudsy and greasy?

City boys – including city-born politicians – like to channel a country vibe with their smart RM Williams boots. Not Taylor.
“He was just all country and I was a hardcore country girl. He was good-looking. And he worked hard.”
Both from the country, their respective family lives were different. “We weren’t well-to-do. We didn’t have a big garden, we had a farm, we had a house, and the sofas creaked.”
The Taylors caught trout at their big dam on their sheep and cattle property at Nimmitabel. They weren’t establishment though, Clegg says, laughing as she recalls her husband’s father keeping a gun in the kitchen, daring the police to come for it after John Howard’s gun law reforms. But the Taylors were wealthy, their farms dated back to the early 20th century. Taylor’s maternal grandfather was a senior engineer on the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme. His parents were university-educated and dinners at the Taylors might include a retired professor of economics.
“That was not your usual country story,” she says. “All the (Taylor) boys went to university, too.”
But Clegg says any notion of the Taylors being toffs is misguided. Most of the boys earned scholarships to attend the elite and expensive King’s School in their later years in Sydney. Their mother, Anne, taught the boys to read and write before they went to the local public school along with 50 other children. Clegg learned early that education and a hard Protestant work ethic drove the Taylors.
“On university holidays, everyone worked, it was straight out to the paddock where we went mustering,” she says. “You didn’t sit around reading books or lounge around doing nothing.”

Oh it was full Wuthering Heights... From country roots to a Sydney pub meeting, a young Louise Clegg and Angus Taylor began their story, united by their rural upbringing. Picture: Supplied

Or maybe full Woman's Day or the Women's Weekly or New Idea?

And still the pond struggled. 

Creepy crawly?

O the cunning wiles that creep 
In thy little heart asleep! 
When thy little heart doth wake
Then the dreadful night shall break.

When Taylor wasn’t on the farm, he was a volunteer ski patroller in the winter or taking groups of riders out on horseback in the summer.
“I was a bit of a party girl. I had been pretty slack. I didn’t even know what a postgraduate degree was when Angus was talking about doing economic honours and he was applying for the Rhodes (scholarship to Oxford).
“I was like, what is that even about?”
Clegg came from a world of different expectations. “I didn’t have an underprivileged background,” she adds quickly. “In fact, it was very privileged because I was surrounded by love.” The boy from Nimmitabel noticed. On a visit to her parents’ home, Clegg and Taylor went for a drive towards a hill on their property.
“We used to drive to the bottom sometimes and walk up. So that day we jumped in the ute.
“Suddenly half my siblings jumped in the back of the ute too. The labrador was there too, along with a kangaroo.
“I don’t think I said much just, ‘Oh, sorry.’ But he knew I was embarrassed.
“He turned to me and said, ‘I have never met a family that love each other so much.’ ”
Clegg says their family looked Catholic, acted Catholic. “We had that feisty Irish republican thing going on.” Taylor’s family was more serious, more cerebral, more conservative.
“That explains one of the differences between us.”
‘A lot of talk about God’
Clegg was drawn to Taylor’s love of religion, too, she says, recalling their early conversations.
“There was a lot of talk about God and what God meant,” Clegg says. “I had never met anyone who was so interested in what it meant to be alive. Angus definitely has a relationship with God; he is a believer. I think it was partly driven by the fact that Gus had just lost his mother. She died at the age of 47 from breast cancer,” Clegg says, leaving behind a husband and four sons. Taylor was just 22.

By now the pond was well past the TMFI stage, both verbal and visual ... Angus Taylor's parents. His mother died at 47 from breast cancer when Angus was 22. Picture: Supplied

And still the pond struggled.

What was better? Gushing or slavish bootlicking?

Not long after, he embraced and was embraced by Clegg and her rambunctious family.
It wasn’t an issue that Clegg had a different relationship with religion. “I love going to church, I love talking about religion and God … but it’s hard for me to get there, to have a relationship with God. I can’t quite get there.”
When Clegg and Taylor were on the cusp of their careers – he was off to consulting firm McKinsey, she was headed to law firm Clayton Utz – Taylor suggested a seven-day horse trek, each of them on a horse, with another horse carrying their packs, through the Snowy Mountains. At night they pitched a tent or bedded down in one of the small huts scattered across the region, crossing rising rivers, trying to stay dry. Though it was late December, there was a bizarre snowstorm.
Was she being tested? No. Her country credentials were established. “He didn’t want to marry a princess,” she says, “and I certainly wasn’t one.
“I cried when we got back to Adaminaby and pulled in to get petrol on the way home because I thought, ‘That’ll never happen again.’ ”
Clegg gets teary only once, for a second, over many hours speaking with Inquirer. She is describing the support Taylor has always given her. “He changed me,” she says, laughing at her tears.
“He was really good for me academically. I worked harder at uni after I met him. He would never take credit for any of it, but he did change me.”
After they married, Clegg, by then the mother of a toddler, decided she wanted to be a barrister. Their families thought it was crazy. “This woman has a young child, she wants more children, why would she go to the Bar?” Clegg recalls.
“Angus was the one who said: ‘You should do that if that’s what you want.’ ”
And she did, topping the state Bar exams in mid-2000 when she was eight months pregnant with their second child.
One of Clegg’s friends said their children must have been the result of immaculate conception. Taylor’s career at McKinsey took him overseas for months at a time. Clegg says she can’t recall him having a single Sydney client.
Even as she was carving out her own stellar new career in administrative law, Clegg decided to do something out of left field. A woman who went to school with Clegg in Tottenham had been convicted for assaulting a man in the local hospital. The community, including her father, was convinced it was a stitch-up. The woman was a fabulously good nurse, Clegg says.
“My father rang me and said, Mary* (not her real name) needs you. I thought, ‘I can’t do this, I can’t get a judge to agree to retry the case.’ I rang my criminal lawyer friends in Sydney and they all said they won’t allow you to retry the case.”
Clegg convinced a judge at the Parkes local court, in central west NSW, to do just that. Months later, the case was retried in a court, in the big smoke, in Dubbo.
Clegg retells the day the verdict was delivered in favour of the nurse. “People I grew up with, friends of my mum and dad, from my class, were sitting in the gallery of the Dubbo court and they were crying. She (the nurse) was crying because she could practise again.”
Four years earlier, Clegg’s husband had entered federal politics. Busy with her own career, and family, Clegg was – and is – an eager campaigner for her husband. Not every political spouse enjoys campaigning. She does.

Still the visual distractions kept coming ... Reflecting on Taylor’s unwavering support, Clegg says, ‘He changed me.’ Picture: Supplied

And still the pond struggled...

Smarmy, wheedling?

Still, families of politicians do suffer. Clegg says she found the early attacks on Taylor tough, especially the ones by Liberal politicians. Taylor was nonplussed. “Now I see them as a badge of honour,” Clegg says, understanding the attackers felt threatened by Taylor’s intellect and business experience.
Around this time, Clegg was also observing the emerging great divide in Western democracies, including Australia, between what English writer David Goodhart called the “somewheres” – people grounded by where they live, tied to their local communities through work and family – versus the “anywheres”: more well-to-do, educated people who work anywhere, their outlook borderless.
Clegg says it was clear that Abbott was channelling the “somewheres” while Malcolm Turnbull was firmly in the “anywheres” camp.
Clegg and Taylor straddled both, but she says they left Sydney’s eastern suburbs, moving back to Goulburn in late 2011, because they are, at heart, country people. She says some of their friends told them not to move their kids back to country public schools. “Angus said: ‘Our kids will be more privileged if they go to Goulburn West Public School.’ ”

A final snap, Angus, Louise and their four children at home on their property near Goulburn. Picture: Supplied

The pond realised it had no alternative.

Only vulgarity could begin to conjure up the experience. 

Either soft core, "brown-nosing", or a little harder, "*rse-kissing" (*google bot aware).

And yet even vulgarity was not enough ...

I am in tedious, unctuous verbiage
Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, 
Returning were as tedious as go o'er

Clegg’s political antennae are sharp so Inquirer fired some quick questions at her: What’s the answer for the Liberal Party? “Liberals need to stand up for liberal values,” she says.
“We’re running away from them, shy about them, but liberalism is the only thing that’s going to stop the country going the same way as Venezuela.”
Can the Liberals win back seats held by the so-called teals? “Yes, we can, it’s tough, but we shouldn’t pander to them. Tim Wilson did it in Goldstein,” she says adding that economics is the key, as living standards continue to decline.
Does the Liberal Party have a problem with women? “Absolutely not.” Clegg is adamant that gender politics is overcooked.
“It’s time to restore some balance. Any professional woman like me who’s been raising children will know that when the boys go into the workforce, the young women are better off, they are getting the jobs, they are being promoted before men. Even some teal voters are waking up to this,” Clegg says.
What does she make of the rise of One Nation? “One Nation voters are not ideological. They are grassroots Australians,” she says, returning to her theme of “somewheres”. “They want authenticity and consistency.”
What should the Liberals do about Turnbull when he launches another tirade against his own party? That’s easy, she says: “Simply write him off as being Labor now. He’s no longer a Liberal.”
One final question: why didn’t Clegg go into politics?
“I would have been just another lawyer in federal parliament,” she says. “And the country needs Angus.”
Fair enough. But Clegg is not just another lawyer. Not by a long shot.

Did the pond mention it's been re-reading Vonnegut of late, and is currently on Cat's Cradle as a toilet companion?

“I don't know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves "Our Lady of the Perpetual Astonishment”

And with quiet thanks for being perpetually astonished by the reptiles, a quiet prayer of thanks ...

“God made mud.

God got lonesome.

So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!"

"See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the

sky, the stars."

And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look

around.

Lucky me, lucky mud.

I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.

Nice going, God.

Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly

couldn't have.

I feel very unimportant compared to You.

The only way I can feel the least bit important is to

think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and

look around.

I got so much, and most mud got so little.

Thank you for the honor!

Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.

What memories for mud to have!

What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!

I loved everything I saw!

Good night.

I will go to heaven now.

I can hardly wait...

To find out for certain what my wampeter was...

And who was in my karass...

And all the good things our karass did for you.

Amen.”

And speaking of sycophants and weirdness and strangeness ...

In which nattering "Ned" and pedantic prattling Polonius give Pauline a go, with sundry other reptiles as supporting acts ...

Yesterday's session was probably as heavy as its ever got for the pond ... the bromancer dancing with Pauline, the dog botherer gone snowflake, the Ughmann deep in Marist land ...

And yet any hopes the pond had for a quiet Sunday meditation were dashed by the leftovers that hovered into view, because the song of Pauline continued.

Pauline, Pauline, Pauline
Your beauty is beyond compare
With flaming locks of red-dyed (died?) hair
With fish and chips skin and eyes of emerald green
Your smile is like a breath of outrage
Your voice is grating like summer hail damage
And I cannot compete with you, Pauline.

Well it's not Kez - where's the rhyming? - but it is free.

It turned out that prattling Polonius, most ponderous, pompous pundit of all, was all in on Pauline ...

The header: One Nation surge shakes up both sides of politics; Rising support, security fears and shifting voter loyalties signal a deeper realignment that both major parties can no longer ignore.

The caption: Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has surged in support amid voter discontent and security concerns. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Some might object to the pond joking about Pauline's hair colour, but the pond can confirm from personal experience that at her age, the colour comes from a bottle or similar delivery system.

As for Polonius's piece, it had one upside. 

That opening snap was the one illustration the reptiles had deigned to offer to break up the text.

And that's about it.

The pond decided to match the style, and let Polonius ramble on until his four minutes had expired, and the pond could reclaim its time:

The South Australian election last Saturday confirms that there has been a dramatic change in Australian national politics during the past six months. This partly reflects a sense of disillusionment in the electorate with the cost of living and security concerns.
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party increased its support throughout 2025. As measured by Newspoll, One Nation’s support was at 15 per cent on October 27-30 and it remained so in late November. By January 12-15, support had risen to 22 per cent and by February 23-26 it was at 27 per cent.
This is a dramatic increase over the holiday season, explainable only by the Islamist terrorist attack on the Australian Jewish community at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on December 14, 2025.
As Gemma Tognini pointed out in her address to The Sydney Institute on antisemitism in Australia earlier this year, what is different about December 14 turned on the fact the attack occurred at a popular public place. Previously, antisemitic attacks in Australia had targeted synagogues, Jewish schools, Jewish-owned businesses and the like.

(No, the pond won't interrupt to note that sly plug for garrulous Gemma and the Sydney Institute, nor comment on Polonial praise for Minns and Malinauskas, which in an alternative world might have made the two state humbugs pause and reflect on their assorted follies).

NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns performed extremely well after the massacre, as did NSW Liberal Party leader Kellie Sloane (who was present at the scene of the crime and assisted in helping some victims). Hanson and One Nation’s recruit Barnaby Joyce made a prominent visit to Bondi in the aftermath of the murders.
As Minns has pointed out, the two young members of NSW Police who were present when the attack started acted courageously and walked towards the alleged gunmen. But there were only two police officers. Many others came later and the gunmen were put down.
When 80-something broadcaster Alan Jones was arrested for historical sexual assault in November 2024, it was reported that 12 police cars attended. In recent times, Jones’s charges have been downgraded from the District Court to the Magistrates’ Court.
The NSW Police Force initially underestimated the risk to the Jewish community on December 14. Many other Australians did likewise. This is no longer the case.
At times Hanson has made intolerant statements about Muslim Australians. But her message about radical Islam has got through to both sides of politics.
It is not clear what will be the final count of the South Australian election. But with around 70 per cent of votes counted, the Labor primary vote is at 38 per cent compared with One Nation (22 per cent), Liberal Party (19 per cent), Greens (10 per cent) and others at 11 per cent.
The Peter Malinauskas-led Labor Party has won an estimated 33 seats compared with the Liberals four, One Nation two, independents four and four in doubt.
The outcome is a stunning success for Malinauskas and Labor, but not without problems. For its part, the Liberal Party remains the official opposition despite some predictions that it would lose all its seats. So, it has a base of support from which to recover.
Writing in the Australian Financial Review on March 23, John Black (a former Labor senator for Queensland) commented: “One Nation candidates with a few weeks’ campaign experience ripped the heart out of the traditional South Australian Labor Party demographic base vote of battlers.” Black added: “One Nation candidates did even more damage to the middle-class urban base vote of traditional Liberal voters, leaving Labor likely winners of every Adelaide seat except Bragg.”
One problem for the Liberals is that they did not receive One Nation preferences. Nationals leader Matt Canavan criticised One Nation for requesting preferences from the Liberal Party (which it received) while declining to do likewise with respect to the Liberals. It’s called a double standard.

In the lead-up to the South Australian election, One Nation SA leader Cory Bernardi said his party wanted to make preference deals a thing of the past. Bernardi (who was a Liberal senator before he quit and established the Australian Conservatives, which failed to take off) should know better. Any decision of One Nation not to preference the Liberal Party or the Nationals above Labor is of assistance to Labor.
Some commentators say a significant number of former Coalition voters (the Liberal Party plus the Nationals) have parked their votes with One Nation due to disillusionment with the Coalition. This may be the case. Certainly the new leadership team of Angus Taylor and Canavan has improved the Coalition’s performance. Nevertheless, One Nation’s support base is not going to shrink any time soon.
After all, One Nation voters have reason to feel alienated from contemporary politics as their standard of living declines. Moreover, many support Hanson’s call for a substantial reduction of immigration and her determination to junk any commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050. And then there is her public condemnation of radical Islam.
On the basis of current polls, it would appear to be disastrous for the Coalition parties if One Nation fails to preference them ahead of Labor. It seems Hanson recognises that such a decision would be counter-productive for her party.
Addressing the Minerals Council of Australia in Canberra last Monday, Hanson said she would be “very happy” to help elect a Coali­tion government at the next election. She said she would not join a Coalition government but would agree to support it in votes of confidence motions and the granting of supply.
Meanwhile, former Victorian Liberal Party premier Jeff Kennett told Sky News’ The Kenny Report last Monday that he wanted all Liberal, Nationals, One Nation and independent voters who wished to defeat Labor at the election in November “to get together and put the interests of Victoria first”. That is, to defeat Jacinta Allan’s government.
Kennett said, “I am less Liberal than I am a Victorian.”
Already One Nation’s growing support has changed Australian politics, for the moment at least. In federal parliament last Tuesday, Taylor warned that “Islamic extremism” was a threat to Australia, while in Adelaide Malinauskas warned Labor supporters to put the question of “are you for Australia” ahead of appealing to the left wing, many of whom sneer at One Nation voters. Australia is different in 2026 from what it was in 2025.

That was exceptionally tedious, even by Polonius's unceasing quest for banality and for titillating himself by veering off into the thickets of Islamophobia and climate science denialism and furriner bashing..

Even worse, there was not a single mention of the ABC, or its strike, and the shocking way the reptiles had been deprived of ABC content for a day.

At least the dog botherer whined about how he was deprived of his much loved ABC shows.

It's getting so that the old dotard is even forgetting his favourite shortcuts on the keyboard ...

What he needs is a plan ...

What else? Well the pond was facing a dire overload, so it sent the usual flourishes of transphobia off to the intermittent archive, currently working, but who knows when it might next collapse.

There were two offerings, with a serve of garrulous, grating Gemma to go...

Hands off our female experience: Why the unique suffering of women is not ‘up for grabs’
As women’s unique biological experiences are co-opted for the gender diverse, I’m defending science, not fighting a culture war.
By Gemma Tognini

The second offering was even more offensive, purporting to be caring, but making clear that there was not the slightest interest in what had motivated the sibling...

The cost of silencing medical debate on gender
Witnessing a sibling’s transition, I’ve found that medical institutions are narrowing compassion by stifling honest discussion.
By Elizabeth C*

The pond has always given the reptiles' transphobia a pass, and there was nothing in that drivel to change the pond's mind.

The pond prefers to see real men in action, caught in a phallic thrust ...

As usual, the pond seized the chance to avoid Nick ...

We are witnessing the unmaking of class politics itself
As Australia marks 125 years since its first election, the forces that once built the two-party system now appear to be pulling it apart.
By Nick Dyrenfurth
Contributor

A small sample will explain why ...

...Figures such as Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce capture the insurgent mood, but both are products of the existing political class rather than architects of a new one. The question is who – if anyone – can translate insurgent energy into a coherent, durable political project. In other democracies, figures such as National Rally’s Jordan Bardella in France and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hint at what that next phase may look like.
It is why I have argued that Andrew Hastie – drawn from outside the traditional political class, unencumbered by ideological dogma and possessing a measure of outsider credibility – may offer the Liberals their best chance of resisting displacement on the centre right.
The question is no longer whether the system will change. It already has. The question is whether a new alignment – a modern equivalent of the Fusion – will emerge, or whether fragmentation will persist, leaving Labor dominant by default rather than design.
Nick Dyrenfurth is executive director of the John Curtin Research Centre.

The pastie Hastie is what we need, or maybe a Bardella or Meloni?

John Curtin is likely rolling in his grave.

Similarly the pond avoided these offerings, from Brownie and snappy Tom...

Libs give Labor green light for big spend on fuel excise
Angus Taylor has made it easier for Labor to avoid tough choices with a sugar hit that will ultimately make Australians poorer.
By Greg Brown
Chief political correspondent

From oil bump to slump when grave expectations bite
Rising fuel costs and fragile confidence collide, raising the stakes for policymakers as global conflict feeds inflation fears at home.
By Tom Dusevic
Contributor

Relax chaps, it's an Emeritus Chairman approved and encouraged excursion, what could possibly go wrong?

Just get on board with the ship of fools and sail off to the klown karnival ... (is there an Iranian hacker in the haus for the kache of hockey Olympic medallist Kash's klassics?)

The pond also dodged and weaved its way around Cameron's piece...

Two problematic options for Trump as Iran holds global economy to ransom,
Caught in a no-man’s land, the US President is faced with some unpalatable choices. Wisely, he’s leaving his options open.
By Cameron Stewart

The pond did catch a teaser trailer ...

... but then, spoiler alert, skipped to the end of the show ...

...Trump seems to be moving ever closer to what would be a mixed outcome from this war. If he chooses to end it in the next few weeks, he, along with Israel, will have dealt a severe blow to the 47-year-old Islamic regime, weakening its ability to spread terror and to threaten its neighbours. That is a good outcome for the Middle East.
Some will argue that this alone has justified the conflict while others will argue that the damage to the global economy has been too high.
But the president will have failed in his initial aim of toppling the regime or bending it to his will.
He may have set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions but not ended them. And the regime still will be able to repress those millions of brave Iranians inside Iran who oppose it.
What’s more, Iran will have demonstrated its ability to close the Strait of Hormuz whenever it wants to rattle the global economy. And then there is the longer-term economic fallout from the energy price shocks of the past month.
It is too early to say how many of these outcomes will come to pass, but that is the direction in which it is heading. For now, Trump has to make the critical decision about whether to further escalate and lengthen this war through the introduction of ground troops or end it by seeking a negotiated ceasefire that is unlikely to contain all that he wants.
It’s a big decision. And one that will shape his legacy.

Legacy? 

Truth to tell, a completely dysfunctional United States is already his legacy to the world, and that legacy was in place the moment he took the throne.

Deep inside the hive mind, Cameron doesn't have a clue, but this is his chance to hit fury road:

Besides, it will all change by tomorrow, as quick as two shakes of a lamb's tail or one King Donald brain cell creating a shower of sparks by accidentally rubbing up against another one ... (man, woman, TV, camel, elephunt)

All that intermittent archiving cleared some room for the lizard Oz editorialist.

As noted yesterday, the reptiles were heavily into their new angle for their climate denialism, which is to pretend that they're caring environmentalists, and these two offerings can be viewed in that light.

The world will never be weaned off coal and gas if the reptiles of Oz have their way, and be damned to the climate and the planet ...

There was also an Oz ed note on Pauline:

All she's doing is touting the sort of white Xian nationalism you could expect from the bromancer, together with the lizard Oz's campaign against furriners, its Islamophobia, its disdain for climate science, and its love of coal, oil and gas.

But at least it serves as a cue for "Ned" nattering on about Pauline ...

The header: One Nation is shaking the system amid volatile new political dynamic; Establishment politics is under massive assault in a nation that is losing its way — but don’t be misled by Hanson’s ‘consistency’ myth.

The caption, which at last gave a credit, to the mighty Emilia and her mighty collage artwork: The ascent of Pauline Hanson, centre, might make One Nation the popular alternative to Anthony Albanese’s Labor in terms of voting strength. Artwork: Emilia Tortorella

Stand back. Where Polonius had only one snap, "Ned" was given many visual distractions, and laboured long and hard for ten minutes to produce a mouse, whereas Polonius had managed the feat in just four:

Establishment politics is under assault in Australia. The two-party model and the political class are on notice. The Pauline Hanson One Nation success at the South Australian election has convulsed the Liberal Party but also made inroads into the Labor Party despite its landmark victory.
At a time of living standards stagnation, rising prices and cultural division Hanson has emerged as an iconic champion for an Australia disappearing in the rear-view mirror. She falls outside an increasingly discredited political class, taps into a “feelings” vibe that Australia is on the wrong track, exploits the generational alarm that younger people will be worse off than their parents and channels anxiety around housing, energy and a “lost nation” nostalgia.

Didn't "Ned" read the bromancer's celebration of Pauline?

 ...it may be that the new duo-leadership of Hanson plus Barnaby Joyce just about gets there. Hanson’s stuttering delivery and Joyce’s many misadventures confirm their anti-politics “authenticity”.
Commentators completely misunderstand much of this. Sean Kelly, an often insightful writer in the Nine newspapers, listed racism as a core appeal of One Nation. With respect to Kelly, I think that’s dead wrong.

Sheesh, instead the reptiles flung in the bouffant one in an AV distraction, The Australian’s National Editor Dennis Shanahan on Pauline Hanson’s decades-long political transformation.

This was a tough "Ned" Everest to climb, with the Chicken Little clucking at clouds exceptionally strong ...

Above all, Hanson constitutes the most potent backlash from the crisis of the Australian system – where both recent Liberal and Labor governments have failed to deliver substantial increases in living standards to wide sections of the public. There is a sense of system failure. The latest Newspoll shows support for the major parties – Labor and Coalition – at a dismal 52 per cent, proof of Hanson’s massive assault.
“The other two political parties have not delivered,” Hanson told The Australian after the SA result. “All they’ve delivered to them (the people) is hurt and pain, instability, no vision for the future, and the people don’t want any more of that.”
Don’t be misled by the ‘consistency’ line
Hanson upends our political model. Who is the real opposition, the Coalition or Hanson? The Liberal Party must urgently wind back her primary vote – yet the better Hanson polls, the more the media elevates One Nation. Don’t be misled by the line that Hanson’s popular surge is because she has been consistent for 30 years. The truth is that Hanson is more formidable today because our nation’s tribulations play far more powerfully into her grievance mantra.
Most of the population has been under economic and price pressures for too long; the urban-rural divide in Australia now runs into a “two cultures” dilemma; immigration is too high and social cohesion is being eroded; the nation is more divided over what constitutes Australian identity; and there is a potent backlash against progressive values, from climate action to identity politics to the assault on traditional Christian-oriented morality.
As One Nation steals votes from the Coalition and guarantees the election of Labor governments, the Liberal Party is mired in tactical confusion: how best to resist Hanson yet work to maximise her preferences.

Note this caption ...Pauline Hanson’s core propaganda line is that Australia is losing its way and she is its saviour.

Now see how that caption is transformed into a bald statement of fact in "Ned's" text ...

Hanson is now winning a degree of legitimacy she didn’t enjoy during 1998, her previous high tide. Among much of the cultural right in this country Hanson is depicted as a cultural heroine, a cult figure known as “Pauline”, an old-fashioned Australian and a battler for her causes. She benefits from the intellectual and political crisis that afflicts Australian conservatism. And the old rules still apply: attacks on her as a racist don’t work, they merely fuel her standing.
“The public have now caught up with me,” Hanson said earlier this week. “They trust me. They trust the fact that I’m passionate about my country. I’m a patriotic Australian and the way the country’s gone and going is not what they want.”
Australia is losing its way
Her core propaganda line cannot be missed – Australia is losing its way and Hanson is its saviour. The economic and cultural tensions vest Hanson with far more traction than at any time in the past generation. Hanson’s success exposes Australia as a fractured nation with its politics being atomised. The trend will not be confined to the centre-right. The two-party model is eroding.
RedBridge director of strategy Kos Samaras told Inquirer: “The post-war political order is dead. The stable system that got established in Australia and many Western countries is now fragmenting. We are seeing politics reverting to a pre-Second World War period, with multiple conflicts, where new movements arise and where the urban-rural divide hardens into incompatible political cultures.”

But it must be true we're losing our way, because the lizard Oz highlighted the way Australia is losing its way

Quick, an AV distraction featuring Tamworth's endless, ineradicable shame ... looking decidedly sleazy, in a way only certain New England men can manage ...

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce outlines One Nation’s policies. “We’d get rid of the climate change department,” Mr Joyce told Sky News host Andrew Bolt. “In removing the climate change department, we remove so many of the regulations that are a direct impediment to the construction of new oil refineries. “We believe in the construction of new coal-fired power plants. We believe in the construction of new oil refineries. “Part of our national security is having fuel security.”

You see? Tamworth's shame is just repeating lizard Oz editorial policies to the Bolter, himself a firm climate science denialist man ...

This is the monster these reptile Frankensteins have created and now urge on ... while "Ned" clucks away at clouds in his Chicken Little way ...

Samaras says while the Liberals have succumbed to centre-right fragmentation, the Labor Party will soon be under pressure from centre-left fragmentation. He envis­ages the rise of parallel and competing populist movements on the right and the left but united by a common bond: a burn-down-the-system mentality.
He says: “There’s a large number of people who want significant change in the country, in excess of 60 per cent of all voters. About a third of One Nation voters have this ‘burn the place down’ view.
“When you speak to people who have moved from the Liberal Party to One Nation – they tend to have a trade qualification and live in the outer suburbs or the regions – the No.1 reason they give is rejection of the two-party system. They believe the two-party system has failed them economically.
“For the Liberals to rebuild trust, I think it will take as long to rebuild as it has taken things to fall apart.
“Many of these people now in their 50s were the Howard battlers. When Howard was around they were in their 30s and 40s and felt the Liberals managed the economy in a way that rewarded their hard work. Their thinking was: I work hard, pay my taxes, accumulate wealth and allow my family to prosper – but that contract is now broken. These people feel they have been going backwards and this goes back to the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison period.
“There is an emerging problem on the Labor side, it’s just taking a little bit longer. There are definite signs of a growing appetite for an alternative on the left side of politics. All our surveys show that among Gen Z the green vote is around 30 per cent and among women of that age it’s in the mid-40s across the entire country. In the UK nearly half of 18 to 24-year-olds are open to voting Green.”

And why do vulgar youff think about voting Green? Well they have to try to live on the planet a lot longer than "Ned", or for that matter, Tamworth's enduring shame.

Strategist Kos Samaras warns that Labor is better placed to manage the coming fragmentation; Zohran Mamdani’s victory is seen as a pointer to the potential disruptive power of the youthful left

The pond did appreciate "Ned's" attempt to seem vaguely relevant by dragging Zohran into the mix. The pond had thought he was some bloody socialist from Kenya, or maybe the middle east:

A golden opportunity for populist disrupters of the right
The populist disrupters of the right and left have a golden opportunity because living standards face further attrition. Examine the outlook for the coming 12 months: it is a deadly mixture of foreign wars, a global energy meltdown, higher petrol prices along with higher infla­tion, rising interest rates, weak productivity, punishing income tax and a housing market locking out younger aspirants, a climate made for assaults on the existing political system.
But Samaras warns that Labor is better placed to manage the coming fragmentation. “Australian Labor has a strong and diverse support base,” he says. “As the political base of the country has moved towards the big cities Labor has been able to secure Bennelong, Reid, Menzies, Deakin and Parramatta off the back of a new working-class and middle-class constituency. The university-educated constituency votes for parties of the left, the Millennials are strong Labor supporters, and the professional working class, teachers, nurses, public servants, is basically Labor’s Praetorian Guard.”

Samaras says these rival movements have “a shared destructive impulse that makes the current moment so volatile and so reminiscent of the 1930s”. He warns that Gen Z is concentrated in the inner cities, among youthful and diverse communities, and that the victory of democratic socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York is a pointer to the potential disruptive power of the youthful left that is digitally connected and comfortable with diversity.

Next up was a man who couldn't even manage a writers' festival:

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has urged Australians to be “proud” of who they are and has called for every leader to be “patriotic”. “I don’t like the idea of patriotism and pride in our country being adopted or co-opted by only one segment of the political spectrum – it belongs to all of us, all of us as a country,” Mr Malinauskas told Sky News Australia. “I don’t like it when progressives sneer at One Nation voters wrapping themselves in the flag anymore than I like it One Nation voters wrapping themselves in a flag and sneering at a group of people from another ethnicity or faith background. “We should be proud of who we are as a country. I’m patriotic for our country. I think every leader should be.”

Every day the pond says a little prayer to the long absent lord offering thanks for having escaped croweater land, only to then realise it landed in Minns land, and he couldn't manage a writers' festival either ...

Now stand back, more worry about the sky falling, and not because of all the CO₂ ...

In response to Hanson, both governing parties are plunging into reassessment. Victorious SA Premier Peter Malinauskas invoked patriotism and the flag in his novel victory speech as necessary steps to check Hanson’s momentum. “The cultural question must be top of mind,” Malinauskas said. “It comes down to: are you for Australia?” Echoes of this pitch trickled out of the Albanese government during the week.
Malinauskas, a symbol of the once all-powerful Labor Right, warned progressives against “sneering at those who wave the flag or wrap themselves in the flag”. He said patriotism did not belong to any political ideology and that the task today – to combat Hanson – was to get both the economics and the culture right. This is the task of the Coalition under Angus Taylor and Matt Canavan.
As the South Australian election revealed, One Nation cannot command many seats because the preference system works against it. But the actual vote shows One Nation at 22.5 per cent and the Liberal Party at 19 per cent.
Devastating damage looms
Hanson’s lead over the Liberals constitutes a threat to centre-right politics unprecedented since World War II: that Hanson might become the strongest party on the right of politics. That would locate Hanson as the popular alternative to Albanese Labor in terms of voting strength, an outcome for Australia that would do devastating damage to our public policies.
Hanson shakes the cage in which we have consigned our history. She exploits the contemporary division over Australia’s identity, notably the progressive mantra that Australia is a morally flawed project, the product of a 1788 invasion, blighted by racism, sexism and patriarchy, legacies yet to be fully purged and that contaminate our national icons from Anzac Day to Australia Day. Such thinking is now deep-seated in our cultural institutions and deeply resented by many people.
There was always going to be a fierce backlash against this progressive moralism. The tragedy is that it seems to be centred on Hanson. For years the Liberals have failed to mount a broadbased persuasive view on Australian identity, apparently uninterested in the task.

At this point the reptiles tried to sucker the pond into a premium price point ...

PREMIUM
Former Australian of the year leads controversial chant at protests
Become a member to access our premium video content

Pay to watch the reptiles bash Tame when the pond can watch Benji perform ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank for free?

Nah ...

Meanwhile, the independent Scanlon Foundation Research Institute’s findings in the latest 2025 report make chilling reading. It finds only 34 per cent or one-third of people take “great pride in the Australian way of life and culture”, that only 42 per cent “strongly agree that maintaining the Australian way of life and culture is important”, and that only 46 per cent have “a sense of belonging in Australia to a great extent”. The results show that generational differences are widening; younger people have less sense of belonging in Australia and show less support or pride in the Australian way of life.
Australia increasingly cannot get things done because it cannot agree on issues and cannot agree on its national narrative.
What the Liberals must do now
The Liberals need to project a more relevant and vibrant view of Australian identity – a patriotism both strong and inclusive, as distinct from their episodic forays into this endeavour. They should adopt the formulation championed over the years by Indigenous leader Noel Pearson and developed in his 2022 Boyer Lectures.
Addressing the question of who we are and who we can be, Pearson saw our identity in three stories. First, the spiritual inheritance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples over 65 millennia, the First Nations of this continent. Second, the British institutional inheritance arising from January 26, 1788, in terms of the rule of law, parliamentary government, the English language, British and Irish people, convict and free, leading to Federation. Third, the “diversity in unity” from the migration program showing that people with different roots can live together, making Australia an example to the world.
For Pearson: “These three stories will make us one: Australians.”

Pearson's willingness to perform humbug for the reptiles never fails to astonish the pond, but then he's either a glutton for Voice punishment, or he likes to see his snap in a "Ned" column ... The formulation championed by Indigenous leader Noel Pearson brings together the past, present and future. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

The pond just had to separate this next line out because it might be good for anyone wanting to have a go at stand up, as celebrated in Is This Thing On?

Over the years Labor has shown no interest in this formula. Liberals have periodically engaged, notably Tony Abbott. 

Killer line. It could help generate laughs if you could put this up on the screen behind you ... (warning, you'll be confronted by a shameless plug for his book by the shameless hustler)

There you go Noel, that's the company you keep. 

To get any closer you'd have to be Viktor Orbán and have a healthy budget for wandering indigent former PMs ...

And so to a toad hack who can never be persuaded to shut up ...

But the Liberal Party has never formalised its commitment. It should embark on that process, unless the party is now so broken it cannot agree. The Pearson formula has three immense merits – it is a true account of our story; it is readily understood by most people; and it offers a strong and inclusive Australian identity. It brings together the past, the present and the future.
Putting One Nation into a governing frame
Former Queensland premier Peter Beattie, who fought Hanson during the peak of her powers in Queensland, told Inquirer: “This situation today is totally different to 1998 when I faced her. There’s now a movement on preferences. The Liberal Party is courting her gently, and if they enter a deal to exchange preferences that will be an entirely new political dynamic.”
Beattie highlights Hanson’s statement this week that she would be “very happy” to use her numbers to help elect a Coalition government, that she would always preference the Coalition before Labor but would not be part of any Coalition government.
This is a potentially critical statement, if it sticks. It puts a vote for One Nation into a governing frame. It has the potential to promote One Nation as more than just a protest vote. Hanson, in a cunning move, is saying that a vote for One Nation can assist a change of government – a statement that is contrary to the arithmetic and political reality since votes for One Nation weaken the Coalition vote and therefore assist Anthony Albanese to get re-elected.
Beattie says: “This is a major change for her. She’s usually hated the Coalition almost as much as she hates Labor. But if she is prepared to say this, I think psychologically that makes a difference – people could vote for her with more confidence they might actually change the government.”

Good one, tedious, tiresome toad. 

Keep talking her up, and soon all your wishes and desires will be consummated...Former Queensland premier Peter Beattie says the movement on preferences makes today’s situation very different to 1998. Picture David Clark

Luckily, after that, the Everest peak was in sight ...

That would be an illusion. But it would serve the Coalition in an important way – to maximise the preference flow from One Nation to the Coalition, and that is a vital requirement. Beattie is pessimistic about the ability of a Liberal Party revival in its own right. “The teal seats are gone and any chance of getting them back is delusional,” he says. “I can’t see the Liberal Party coming back under its own force. Its credibility is too low.”
How Labor could exploit this
But Albanese Labor is ready and waiting to exploit any closer ties between the Liberals and One Nation. That would gift Labor’s election campaign with the slogan: “A vote for the Liberals is a vote for One Nation.” This pitch would be powerful in urban seats, threatening the Liberals, and it would offer the teals the chance to expand their numbers.
Meanwhile, the Labor-Greens preference model is stronger than ever. Voting analyst Antony Green in his election blog shows that at the 2025 federal election Greens party preferences went to Labor at an extraordinary 88 per cent – a Greens vote is almost equivalent to a Labor two-party preferred vote. There is no way One Nation preferences to the Coalition will come anywhere near this level.
The Hanson party polled 6.4 per cent at the 2025 election but this had erupted to more than 25 per cent in the latest Newspolls. Hanson was elected to the Senate in 2016, re-elected in 2022 and in 2025 secured a team of four senators. Whether Taylor and Canavan can cut back her high primary vote remains to be seen.
But economic pressures, cultural divisions and the tactical skills of Barnaby Joyce mean One Nation’s vote will remain far above its 2025 election level.

Barners, Tamworth's enduring shame, is the answer?

B*gger it, the pond entirely forgot the question ... (*google bot friendly)

The revolt against the two-party system has deep roots – but looking at its beneficiaries only a foolhardy optimist would think this is good for Australia.

So the lizard Oz is full of foolhardy optimists? A whole pack of them titillated and tempted by the shift to the far right, wherein they have always resided.

And somehow that's a turn up for the"Ned" books?

But it will be be a boon for their climate science denying agenda and they can cluck away about Pauline while assiduously recording and reporting all her talking points, which she gleaned from reading the lizard Oz, and the Murdochian tabloids and watching Sky Noise down under (still no rebranding?) ...

Luckily, no matter how often the pond returns for a kicking, it can never forget that first kick ...

And so to news from America, a day old, but surrealism never ages as a genre ...

It's too much, but here's the time when the bromancer, the dog botherer and the Ughmann walked into a reptile bar on the weekend ...

 

After the bromancer's recent outing, in which he deemed mad King Donald's Iran excursion a "just war", with all the gravitas of a medieval theologian, the pond was incredibly anxious to see where his next missive might take us - perhaps into the white Xian nationalist holy war turf favoured by medieval crusaders?

Tossing aside all distractions, the pond rushed to the read, with a snail-baited breath, and was incredibly disappointed ...

The poor lad could only manage a bout of flag-waving nationalism, though attentive readers will note that every so often the "white" and the "Xian" aspects of the new age of authoritarianism bubble to the surface.

The header: Nationalism trumps globalism. Ask Trump, Farage, Hanson and voters; Loving your country is natural and good. It’s the left’s hatred of Australia and America that is sick.

The caption for the flag-waving designed to stir Pauline's cult: Children wave Australian flags in Sydney for an Anzac Day march. Picture: Mark Evans / Getty Images

Ah, we're back in the days of I love my country, I salute the flag, I honour the Queen and I promise to obey her laws, and for a bigly five minutes get stuck in the ancient corridors of Tamworth Public School, as the bromancer does his salutin' thing.

And see how the "dead white male" pops up in the very first gobbet:

Nationalism is clobbering globalism, all over the West, all over the world, even in Australia. The process is dramatically accelerated by the war in Iran and the resultant energy crisis.
Nationalism explains the huge One Nation vote in South Australia. It’s also the only way to interpret Peter Malinauskas shrewdly reading a Henry Lawson poem as he claimed victory. Now which voters do you think might be attracted by Lawson? The Greens? Inner-city academic lefties? Mmm.
Not only is Lawson a dead white male, he was an avatar of old Australian nationalism. In a poem the South Australian Premier didn’t quote, My Land and I, Lawson wrote: “The parasites dine at your tables spread … But we heed them never my land, my land, for we know how small they are … as we gaze on a rising star.”
All over the West, nationalism is rising. This demands serious analysis. Two big mistakes are to think it’s an irrational response by a deluded electorate or that it’s inherently wicked.

Naturally the reptiles had to feature Pauline, the bromancer's new guide to all that's right and true and just: One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson at Parliament House on Tuesday. Picture: Lukas Coch /AAP

After that visual flourish, the bromancer tried a little billy goat butt:

None of this is to argue Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is a good vehicle to express legitimate Australian nationalism. 

But he didn't really mean that butt. 

He was all in, he was full Pauline, and not even in drag ...

Australia will be best served if the Liberal and National parties get a shot of adrenalin and revive, communicating everything good in patriotism and nationalism. Both major parties need to do this. Malinauskas quotes Lawson. Nationals leader Matt Canavan urges us to “manifest a hyper Australia”. Even Anthony Albanese borrows Tony Abbott’s “Team Australia”.
The oil and gas shock from the Iran war demonstrates nationalism is a rational response to the failure of conventional Western politics. We can no longer rely on economic globalisation and markets to deliver “just in time”. We’re going to have to pay serious money to stockpile stuff, from oil to weapons. We’re going to have to pay even more to subsidise producing critical stuff in Australia.
Conventional globalisation sees us reduced to a quarry, a farm and a high-cost services economy. But geo-strategic realities mean following that model makes us gravely vulnerable. We’ve deindustrialised to a monstrous extent. Energy costs, universal welfare, prohibitive taxation and medieval industrial relations have made us a wildly expensive country to do business in. We need to solve all that. But in the short term we’ve got to pay for stockpiles and production. That’s if we’re nationalists, loving our nation, defending its right to independence, agency and, ultimately, survival.
There are other ways nationalism answers contemporary policy failures. Geo-strategic reordering means the US alliance, while still vital to our security, is looser and less absolutely reliable. So we must be more nationalist, ready to fight for ourselves. Militarily, the Albanese government shows no sign of that, instead voluntarily embracing eurosclerosis socially, economically and militarily.

The alternative? European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s visit marks a step change in EU-Australia security ties. Picture: Getty Images

Can't have any of that eurosclerosis.

The alternative? Embrace your inner Vlad the Sociopath, go full King Donald, imbibe a bigly dose of Kegsbreath ...

Nationalism works socially, too. There’s a collapse of order on the streets, and of morale, among young people particularly, who take their own lives in shocking numbers. Nationalism propels a society to look to its own traditions for resources of meaning, solidarity, morality. Nationalism is traditionalism. In a good society, or one that was once (mostly) good, traditions contain great wisdom (including openness to incremental change).
Nationalism answers identity politics dysfunction. Here’s a key paradox. Democratic nationalism, for all its nation-specific patriotism, is universal within the nation. If you’re a true Australian nationalist, you love every Australian.
Nor is nationalism wicked or immoral. Extreme nationalism, like extreme anything else, is wicked. Extreme nationalism gave us Nazism, extreme egalitarianism gave us communism, extreme Islamism gave us the ayatollahs’ theocracy. But loving your nation is as natural as loving your kids.
This has always underlain the Western tradition. Christianity is a universal religion open to every human being, but that universalism doesn’t cut against particularly loving your family or your nation.

It almost goes without saying that the bromancer would be infatuated by the worst pope of recent times, but the bromancer will say it anyway, what with him being an Xian nationalist ...

Pope John Paul II, the greatest recent pope, emphasised the natural goodness in attachment to nation. The Jewish and Christian traditions believe God first revealed himself to a nation, the Jewish nation. Nationalism is an engine of much Western politics today and partly explains the victories of Donald Trump, the poll lead of Nigel Farage and the sudden rise of One Nation.

Is it wrong to point out a theological nicety here? 

Actually the Jewish god is not the Xian god, because Xians are inclined to trinitarianism (only a few cling to the unitarian heresy), and so Christ is meant to be god, or at least a third of god, which no sensible Jew (or atheist) could ever believe.

So the god that revealed himself to the Jewish tribe (according to its wiki, the modern idea of nations began around the sixteenth century) was certainly not the Xian god.

And speaking of god, here the gods of two cults ...US President Donald Trump and Nigel Farage at a MAGA rally in 2020. Picture: Brendan Smialowski / AFP

The bromancer is clearly infatuated by these cults ...

Generally, nationalist movements need a figurehead with long-established nationalist credentials, someone preferably who suffered a bit for their convictions, who unashamedly puts their nation first and who people could imagine leading a government. Trump and Farage satisfy these criteria. 

They do? Is what's happening in the USA at the moment leadership? Or a demonic narcissist enfeebled by dementia at the head of a cult?

The bromancer sees Pauline as joining this choice leadership team ... apparently the more you stumble blind drunk into a gutter, the more authentic you seem. 

That's why there's so many authentic leaders at Maguires pub in Peel street ...

Hanson falls down on the last, but it may be that the new duo-leadership of Hanson plus Barnaby Joyce just about gets there. Hanson’s stuttering delivery and Joyce’s many misadventures confirm their anti-politics “authenticity”.
Commentators completely misunderstand much of this. Sean Kelly, an often insightful writer in the Nine newspapers, listed racism as a core appeal of One Nation. With respect to Kelly, I think that’s dead wrong.
A YouGov poll this week had One Nation on 27 per cent support, just behind Labor. Among Millennials, One Nation actually came in first, with 30 per cent. Neither 27 per cent of Australians nor 30 per cent of young Australians are racist. Not one speck.
Here’s another thing. If centre-right parties are at all smart, migrants and their children will be among the strongest nationalists in their adopted nations.
I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing both former British prime minister Rishi Sunak and the current Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch. Both are profoundly English, deeply in love with all the good things of England. Sunak told me how much his parents admired Margaret Thatcher, who always stood up for people like them.

Dear sweet long absent lord, for a brief moment there, the bromancer put down his racist glasses, as the reptiles went all in on the new bro cult, Pauline Hanson’s stuttering delivery and Barnaby Joyce’s many misadventures confirm their anti-politics ‘authenticity’. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

And so to the bromancer going full King Donald for his final flourish of floozies:

The theme song at Trump rallies is God Bless the USA, a mournful though sweet country and western elegy, which says: “There ain’t no doubt I love this land, God bless the USA”.
This should not remotely be seen as especially right wing or objectionable. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the most important progressive politician in the 20th century, in his 1940 presidential campaign used the much more treacly God Bless America as his theme song. That song was written by a Russian Jewish immigrant, Irving Berlin, while he was serving in the US Army. Berlin loved and cherished the USA.
Once upon a time the left had the wit, and moral substance, to proudly proclaim their patriotism. Woodie Guthrie, on the far, far left, wrote his famous lyrics: “This land was made for you and me”. This song itself was later attacked by the dreary, woke, identity-politics mavens. Didn’t Guthrie realise this was stolen land? Didn’t he know the US was illegitimate from the start, just as the left grotesquely refers to “so-called Australia” on land “that was never ceded”, as though there’s something illegitimate about Australia and its 28 million people?
The left and Islamists make common cause because they have a common enemy – our nation, our civilisation. Millions die in Sudan but no leftist says a word about it because you can’t easily attack the West over Sudan. The left doesn’t hate suffering or injustice – it hates the West.
For years I went round Southeast Asia visiting Islamist extremists. Certain Western books and authors were always on their book shelves – Noam Chomsky, John Pilger etc. Islamists rejoiced in Western testimony that nations such as Australia and America were evil.
But you know what? God bless Australia, this land was made for you and me.
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor.

What to say? Ain't my god, and he can stick his blessings.

He gets worse by the week, as the world heads towards the rapture ...

And so, before proceeding any further, please permit the pond to pause and see where this celebration, this Chairman Emeritus approved and encouraged excursion, has landed the country this weekend:

Oh that can't be good ...

And now, before turning to the dog botherer, the pond just wanted to mention yesterday's Weekly Beast, as always essential reading.

Murdoch mastheads at odds as sexual assault survivor speaks up about The Australian’s podcast

Delicious stuff, all the more so because the pond never wanders off its narrow lizard Oz path to follow the reptile podcasts, desperate attempts to keep up and be relevant, like back in the day when they took to blogging for a few years.

That tale of internal feuds was followed by an even more delicious observation, ABC strike fires up Sky.

And who was the star there?

...Chris Kenny, whose signature move at Sky has been to attack the ABC, was outraged that his favourite shows were off the air.
Although Kenny derides ABC content as “green left”, he was furious that the strike was “depriving us of our normal services” and he called for presenters, who had told viewers they were going on strike to demand better pay and conditions, to be sacked.
Kenny also made sledges, including: “They’ll probably never rate higher.”
For a 24-hour news channel that regularly calls for the ABC to be privatised or de-funded, Sky spent a lot of time talking about how much viewers would miss. One reporter told a presenter, Peter Stefanovic, that “viewers wanted to tune in to watch the news at seven” but had to settle for Hard Quiz. One headline said: “ABC viewers forced to watch comedy reruns.”
The reporter said: “This morning, when viewers wanted to tune in to the ABC Breakfast show, well, they instead had to watch the international coverage from ABC’s UK affiliates, BBC.”
The shadow communications minister, Sarah Henderson, was given a lot of airtime to say the strike was a “disgrace” but also appeared to back the important work the ABC does: “There has never been a more important time in this country when we need ABC journalists and other content makers to be out in the field informing Australians.”

So the strike was worth it, if only so the pond could experience a weekend irony overload.

And now maestro, a blaze of trumpets puh-leaze as the dog botherer enters from extreme far right stage:

The header: Inside the warped world of the manosphere and its war on real masculinity; As the father of four sons, this topic is personal and imperative.

The caption for the astonishing collage, a major artwork, which outrageously contains no credit for its creator (AI?): Louis Theroux with Harrison ‘HSTikkyTokky’ Sullivan in a documentary that explores the force that not only draws men into debasing themselves and others for money, but women such as Bonnie Blue.

The pond regrets that the dog botherer started out by mentioning his sons because it reminded the pond of an admirable outburst by one of them, now in Junkee's archives...

,,,Chris Kenny is my dad. On one of the Sky News political analysis programs he hosts, he has replied to the Chaser joke, lamenting that if his children were ever to Google his name in the future, this is the kind of filth we would stumble across.
Heaven forbid.
Kenny is a staunchly neo-conservative, anti-progress, anti-worker defender of the status quo. He is an unrelenting apologist for the Liberal Party. He was one of Alexander Downer’s senior advisers at the time of the Iraq War. He’s been known to argue for stubborn, sightless inaction on climate change. He spits at anyone concerned with such trivialities as gender equality, environmental issues or labour rights from his Twitter account on a daily basis. Recently, he characterised criticism of the lack of women in Tony Abbott’s Cabinet as a continuation of the Left’s “gender wars”. He is a regular and fervent participant in The Australian’s numerous ongoing bully campaigns against those who question its editorial practices and ideological biases. The profoundly irresponsible, dishonest, hate-filled anti-multiculturalist Andrew Bolt has recently referred to Kenny on his blog as “a friend”.
And it’s a jokey picture of a bestial embrace that I should be afraid of discovering online?

Sorry, that never gets old for the pond ...

Louis Theroux’s documentary Inside the Manosphere was my first venture into this world of toxic masculinity. It was at once disturbing and laughable.
Disturbing because this cesspit of ignorance, misogyny, antisemitism and violence is being piped around cyberspace into the formative spaces of our teenage children. Laughable because what is being passed off as masculinity is, in fact, immaturity. It is boyhood on steroids, bravado without wisdom, ego without self-awareness, and muscularity without compassion or respect.
Inane, materialistic and shallow, this social media phenomenon may be helping to shape the views of millions of impressionable teenage boys. Even worse, it mirrors and feeds off a grotesque view of womanhood promoted by Bonnie Blue and others in the OnlyFans world.
In the enlightened world of Western liberal democracies, in countries of unprecedented wealth and knowledge, we are seeing a digital retreat to the priorities of the cave dwellers, where nothing matters beyond the law of the jungle, where might overpowers right and greed sweeps aside human dignity. The serious question posed by many is what this tells us about modern masculinity.

Here the pond should disclose that the pond has seen the Theroux documentary, which is pretty typical Theroux and done in his usual style (the pond enjoyed his one on Scientology more).

It doesn't reveal anything new to anyone who has spent any time tracking the toxic outposts of extreme far right thinking in the USA...

What's remarkable is how out of touch the dog botherer manages to sound, but that's probably because he only exists in a lizard Oz/Sky Noise down under (still no rebrand?) bubble.

Amazingly, the reptiles actually provided a link to this Instagram, but as clicks only encourage the beast, and as you have to give up either your email or your Facebook or some other way to feed the machine, the pond won't be following suit, and instead just offers a screen cap:

It's a measure of how desperate the reptiles have become that they provided a link which offered a way out of the hive mind.

To its sorrow, the pond was stuck with the dog botherer:

For me, as the father of four sons, this topic is personal and imperative. My first two are now men in their 30s; digital natives who graduated to adulthood, thankfully, before the influence of social media was strong (it was one of my older sons who put me on to this film). Soon my younger boys will need to navigate a complex digital world populated by the toxic manosphere and other insidious influences.
Many boys their age around the world are following the likes of Andrew Tate, Harrison “HSTikkyTokky” Sullivan, Justin Waller, Myron Gaines and “Sneako”. What they get are demeaning and brutal depictions of women, sex and relationships, as well as conspiracy theories about satanists and Jews running the world.
They also receive affirmation that their red pill* awareness allows them to see through mainstream information. And it is all gift-wrapped in crass materialism. (*Derived from the movie Matrix, apparently, where a red pill delivers such awareness.)

The reptiles interrupted with memories of ancient times, Stills from a YouTube video created by Nathan Pope that criticises influencer Andrew Tate. (Sic, so far as the pond could see, there was only one still, with no signs of a gallery, and natch without any link to YouTube content)

Theroux's documentary is already out of date.

And even the most recent trend has been and gone - see Will Gottsegen's piece in The Atlantic, What Was Clavicular? The internet’s most famous looks-maxxer is far more pernicious than he may seem. (*intermittent archive link)

The point of course is that all this is more than extreme far right adjacent. It's the full quid ...

...Clavicular’s rise is pernicious. The baseline concern with an influencer who takes a hammer to his face and says hateful things is that he is in some sense encouraging other people to do the same. Last month, a couple of fans came up to him during a livestream, and one shouted “Heil Hitler.” Clavicular tried to dismiss the comments as “cringe,” but he quite obviously set the tone. I have some authority here: After I left a note outside his parents’ house requesting an interview for this story, Clavicular shared my contact information online. As a reporter who covers the internet, I am used to being harassed—but I had never experienced so many direct violent threats, and so much virulent anti-Semitic hatred, as I have since then. The looks-maxxer insult “subhuman” kept coming up, as did the word mongrel. (A spokesperson for Clavicular declined to answer my questions.)
The bigger concern with Clavicular is not that he is encouraging a generation of young men to take extreme measures to change their looks. It’s that because his antics are so ridiculous and his videos so entertaining to a certain crowd, he has allowed more coherent and dangerous ideologies to hitch a ride on his movement. The far-right manosphere has seemingly taken every opportunity it can to tie itself to Clavicular. Tate joined him on a stream last month to lift weights and offer advice about how Clav should handle his newfound fame. Jon Zherka, an adjacent influencer, recently likened him to a “younger brother.” Last week, Fuentes called him a “prophet” for exposing the cynical reality of modern dating—a core part of Clavicular’s appeal among this group.

Well yes, and that's why the pond erupted with laughter at this dog bothering line ...

A Guardian review of this documentary suggested the manosphere was all old news. Yet while I had read references to Tate and the manosphere before I had not seen any of it, so all this was new to me.

FFS, talk about completely clueless ...

This is your world ... this is the bromancer pumped up, fully jacked up like Dwayne Johnson in The Smashing Machine ...

This is Faux Noise, Murdochian fantasy land pushed to its obvious outcome ...

Theroux’s examination of this social media microclimate likely will be the first exposure for millions of parents, which can only be a good thing.
Driven by the monetisation of social media followings, these macho influencers seek to humiliate others, sometimes obscenely dressing up their stunts as campaigns for moral rectitude; for instance, condemning the online promiscuity of OnlyFans women while deliberately exploiting their online “clout”. This highlights an age-old hypocrisy as they boast about male “body counts” while trashing women for similar behaviour.
Their online posts can resort to violence – anything to generate clicks under the guise of “coaching boys how to be f--king boys, not soy boys or gimps”. The claimed ideological motivation of reclaiming clearly delineated gender roles of the past is revealed as a ploy rather than a philosophy – the only true motivation for these influencers is money, anything to amass the wealth they love to display.

At that point, another example of detachment from what's going down popped up courtesy of unlovely meter maid Rita ... (still no rebrand?)

Sky News host Rita Panahi is shocked by Matt Walsh’s comments after OnlyFans owner Leonid Radvinsky’s death. “The billionaire owner of OnlyFans, Leonid Radvinsky, died earlier this week after a very private battle with cancer,” Ms Panahi said. “Matt Walsh slammed Radvinsky. “He said that the man dedicated his life to peddling smut and poison. Now he's dead, and his only legacy on this Earth is filth. What a waste of existence.”

Please, catch up ...

It's what passes for civil discourse in the world of Rambo ...

And yet the dog botherer stayed completely clueless...

Yet their pursuit of cash pollutes the minds of the impressionable. “Most women in the world are not like my mum,” Sullivan says after being challenged by his mother, Elaine. “Most are thick.”
“Call me racist, call my misogynist, call me homophobic, call me a scammer, I’m all those things,” Sullivan says. But none of this matters, he says; it is all “clip-farming”. Pinned by Theroux to stand by a declaration he would disown a gay son, Sullivan says, “That’s not homophobic.” And his clips saying “F--k the Jews” gets a similar dismissal: “Does that mean I’m antisemitic? No.”
War is peace. Ignorance is strength.
Sullivan feigns concern about kids as young as 13 watching his clips but he shuns responsibility. “That’s the parent’s fault; that’s not my fault.”

By this point, the dog botherer had begun to sound seriously snowflake, completely wet, someone who spends too much time watching the ABC, or even worse ... Owen Cooper as Jamie Miller in Adolescence, a drama designed to raise awareness about boys going to dark places on the internet. Picture: Netflix

Come on man, stay strong, be hard, get a grip ... remember this is your world, this is the bromancer's Xian state in action ...

The dog botherer began to sound like he was having some kind of anxiety attack ...

For all the technological know-how, you get the sense we are hearing from people a stage or two back in evolution. “It got called toxic,” Justin Waller says, explaining his take on the demise of masculinity. “And you mix that with feminism, we’ve asked women to become men, you know men build, invent and maintain society, that’s a fact you know.”
Theroux’s documentary is compulsory viewing and exemplary filmmaking. He draws conclusions eventually, but his method is weighted towards introducing his subjects, gently prodding and allowing them to reveal themselves – enough rope.
Last year the fictional drama Adolescence drew global attention to the potential psychological and physical harm generated by the manosphere and its social media influencers. Teenage boys are being encouraged to channel their adolescent insecurities and curiosities into a hateful version of masculinity that objectifies and resents women.
There is nothing new, sadly, about violence against women, crimes of jealousy, date rape or bullying. The salient question is whether social media influencers are intensifying these tendencies and normalising such behaviour.
Does the primitive bile they spread not only take teenage boys down an antisocial path but also expose young women to increased risk of sexual violence and mistreatment? The answer is obvious, one must beget the other.

At this point the reptiles tried another flourish of relevance ..

It was an actual working link to the trailer on YouTube ...

It was as if all that talk about attitudes to women was some kind of dreaming ... as if the dog botherer was completely unaware of the smashing machine, where men and women smash each other sh*tless, or where they pound their faces sh*tless in the quest for beauty (google bot approved)

Is the dog botherer completely unaware that a UFC event is being promoted in the White House grounds to celebrate 250 years?

Apparently he is...

The characters Theroux introduces proudly promote “one-way monogamy” where their “wives” must remain faithful while husbands pursue other women and even bring them home to the marital bed.
“I’ll show them a picture of Kristen (his wife) immediately,” Waller says about his dating exploits, “and go straight for the threesome.”
In the manosphere women are shamed as dumb and innately dishonest by men with underdeveloped cerebrums and overblown biceps. These blokes make millions of dollars and live in fancy apartments with full garages and empty bookshelves.
They idolise Donald Trump, and the US President dips his lid to their audiences. In their endless, vapid and offensive posts, racism rears its head, especially the worst kind of conspiratorial antisemitism.

At last, some recognition ... this is what Faux Noise has given unto the world ...

 

Delusions of grandeur ...

Still, in a way, this documentary is reassuring. Sure, it exposes an evil influence, another pocket of social media we need to be wary of so we can help our children avoid it or make the right judgments about it.
This underscores why the Albanese government’s world-leading teenage social media ban has such widespread support. The aims of the ban are almost universally supported, even if we doubt the effectiveness of mere laws to protect our children.

Perhaps also the nationalisation of News Corp in Australia?

The pond keeds, it keeds ...

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has recorded a video message for Australian teenagers, calling on them to make the most of the social media ban. The video will be played in classrooms across the country this week, ahead of the social media ban, which comes into effect on Wednesday. “Make the most of the school holidays coming up … spend quality time with your friends and your family, face to face,” Mr Albanese said.

The dog botherer kept trying to cope ...

The reassuring aspect of Theroux’s examination is that this is all we are dealing with, a dark corner of social media, not a realignment of gender relations or a serious philosophical movement. It is a parasitic industry that seeks to profit from selling old prejudices in contemporary ways to young minds.
The manosphere influencers have nothing to say about real masculinity. In fact, they reflect its antithesis; they are examples of what we get when true masculinity goes missing.
As Theroux teases out, these charlatans are sad cases who seem to have lacked proper male role models of their own. They have the minds and morals of confused boys, trapped in the bodies of men.
Study after study across Western liberal democracies shows that without fathers or strong male role models, young men are more inclined to fail on many levels. The manosphere influencers are not failing financially but they are failing at life and looking to take others with them.
Waller proudly boasts that he will not bathe his daughter or change her nappy. These infantile beasts know nothing about being a real man.
Greed drives them to share extreme behaviour in search of money, and young minds idolise their superficial success. It is the instant fame and fortune of the social media world that is the problem here, not any philosophical journey.
The same force that entices Blue to boast she had sex with more than 1000 men in a day also draws these men into debasing themselves and others for money.
Bad people have always done horrible things, but social media amplifies their exploits and distorts their imaginations.

At this point the reptiles offered up the most wretched AI image to accompany the caption, Almost seven in 10 Australian men aged 16-25 are regularly engaging with masculinity influencers, according to a study from The Movember Institute of Men’s Health. Picture: Getty Images

It might have been handier to note that AI distortions can work both ways ...

And so to final thoughts ...

The answer for our young people must be in real relationships with real men and women. Mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, teachers and coaches, the sort of people most of us were fortunate to grow up around, and with whom we try to surround our children now.
Nothing, probably not even the government’s social media ban, can prevent our children from encountering the worst aspects of social media’s brainless digital sewer. But if they are surrounded by properly functioning adults, in real and loving relationships, we can hope to arm them with the intelligence and sense to resist these putrid enticements.
Perhaps it comes back to the simple point of respect, a quality all too lacking in many aspects of modern society. Respect is more important than money or fame – respect is what we should want for ourselves, those we care about and most everyone else. Respect for women, men and for ourselves. The digital world dispenses with respect in favour of fame, which is why we need organic relationships to keep respect in pride of place.
Masculinity undoubtedly involves strength, sure. But also empathy. It demands courage but also compassion. The less we see of these attributes in the digital world, perhaps the more we need to embrace and display them in the real world.

Yeah, yeah, talk to the News Corp, white Xian nationalist bromancer hand ...

Put it another way ...

And now, before proceeding to the Ughmann - the pond doesn't like it, but it has to be done - a note on the ongoing campaigning about renewables...

Luckily the intermittent archive was working this day ...(no guarantees)

EXCLUSIVE

‘We’re the guinea pigs’: fury at shocking scale of green energy dream
Inside the massive Central West Orana renewable energy zone stands a memorial so macabre even the Greens protested. Locals say it’s just the start.
By Christine Middap

INQUIRER
Why plug-in hybrids are a costly mistake for most Australian drivers
Car tech sold as a happy medium between petrol and electric has a dirty secret.
By Stephen Corby

Once again the reptiles diligently worked to ensure that Australia had no way of coping with current and future oil shocks ... but it was Stephen Corby that particularly got the pond's EV goat with this summary:

...So what is the answer, and are you supposed to just buy a good old new petrol-burning car and let the manufacturer suck up the fines? Well, yes, if you’re a particular kind of motoring enthusiast and you demand performance, loud noises and fun from your car.
But the sensible choice, I’m afraid, is still a hybrid, just not a plug-in one. I call them dumb-dumb hybrids; the kind driven by almost every Uber driver with whom you’ve ever shared an overly perfumed car interior.
Toyota (which I believe is a Japanese word meaning sensible, or an antonym for exciting) is the brand most famous for using a hybrid technology known as “parallel” in most of the cars in its busy showrooms, including the Camry, Corolla and RAV4.
In these hybrids, the magic simply happens without the driver having to do, or think about, anything differently.

Um, no. The sensible choice is a straight EV, and even more sensible, avoid Toyota, which plunged big into denying EVs were a thing, or would ever become a thing, and went hybrid, and were left standing by the Chinese-government EV revolution.

The magic of driving past petrol stations at the moment is magical (though the pond will admit that having conversations with extended family members who persisted in driving diesel can be a bit strained).

Why did the pond get agitated? Because Steve himself belled the cat earlier in his piece:

...Not long ago, I borrowed a Hyundai Kona EV for six months and, by becoming a sun worshipper, I managed to run it for that entire time at effectively zero cost (as long as we don’t discuss the price of my solar panels and EV charger).
This required me to be slightly anally retentive about when I charged it, and I’m entirely sure that if it were my own car I just would have lazily plugged it in overnight at times and paid the bill, but because there was a story in it I was fastidious.
And because we were using the Kona very much as a second car (my wife wanted to buy it in the end, but I pointed to around 50,000 reasons with a dollar sign in front of them why we would not), and it was regularly delivering more than 400km off a charge, I would often go more than a week without having to charge it at all.
And here’s another piece of practical advice: EVs – at this point and with our limited, and limiting, charging infrastructure – make an excellent second car. Anyone buying an EV as their one and only family vehicle is being what I would call “brave”, in the same way Sir Humphrey Appleby used that term on Yes Minister.

There you go, typical mansplaining, with the EV only suitable for the wifey, a line straight out of the manosphere, despite the dog botherer telling the pond that sort of attitude was problematic.

Trust Steve's wife, and look around and there are plenty of cheaper and better cars than Kona to be found (and the pond says that having had a Kona in the house for several years), and forget all the blather about range anxiety, unless you happen to drive to Broken Hill every alternate weekend.

And no paddles are to hand to get you out of paddling up sh*t creek to a manosphere cave (*google bot safe)

And so to this day's final offering.

The pond could have turned to grating, garrulous Gemma, or to "Ned", rabbiting on about Pauline yet again, but there's nothing like the Ughmann, unreformed seminarian and climate science denialist ... especially as he was the one featured at the top of the lizard Oz early in the weekend ...

The header: Stagflation’s return: the wolf at Australia’s energy door; Stagflation now looms over suburban Australia, yet there is a question almost no one in government or the bureaucracy seems willing to ask.

The spot for the place where a caption would have accompanied the astonishing opening illustration, but for some reason, no credit was given, and so the creator (AI?) of this amazing artwork went uncredited.

Okay, the pond admits it. It's too much.

The bromancer, the dog botherer and the Ughmann? It's worse than a bad joke walking into a pub, and this pint takes a bigly seven minutes to swill.

But what choice does the pond have?

Now stand by for undiluted Ughmann, and in the usual way, he begins by reverting to ancient times and his life in the Catholic system:

In February 1977 the new economics teacher at Marist College in Canberra decided to make a dramatic entry.
He strode into the fifth form classroom, picked up the chalk and scrawled one word in capitals across the top of the board: stagflation.
He underlined it and turned to explain. This was a new economic concept, designed to describe our times, when high inflation and high unemployment collided. The word was an inelegant blend of stagnation and inflation, and it was a child of the 70s oil shocks.
Why?
Because oil was not just another commodity. It was the master resource that made and moved economies. When the flow of oil was constricted, the price surged and raised the cost of almost everything at once: transport, manufacturing, farming, plastics and food. Prices rose everywhere because the cost of the lifeblood of the modern world had spiked, and the shock ran down every artery and vein.
The constriction of oil supply also slowed the world’s heartbeat. Households had less money to spend after filling the car and paying the bills. Businesses faced rising costs, shrinking margins and weaker demand. Investment stalled, production slowed and jobs were lost.
Economists had long assumed there was a trade-off between inflation and unemployment, captured in a neat model called the Phillips curve. The oil crisis delivered both together. Growth weakened, unemployment rose and inflation surged. The real world broke the model, as it so often does.
Everything old is new again
With the third Gulf war raging, everything old is new again and a word not discussed outside universities in nearly a half-century is coming back into vogue. The threat is real. The toxic cocktail that could breathe stagflation back into being is being mixed again.
Jim Chalmers did not invoke the term in his speech to business economists this week but all the elements were there.
The Treasurer told the audience the oil price was up 80 per cent since the start of the war, “adding upward pressure to global inflation, interest rate expectations and bond yields, while international equity markets and sentiment more broadly have fallen”.
“It means the prospect of inflation peaking in the high 4s or even higher this year is very real,” he said.
The world’s economic heartbeat is slowing and Australia’s already anaemic growth will weaken further. The longer the oil clot lingers, the greater the damage.
“Treasury estimates that GDP would be 0.6 per cent lower in 2027 and even by 2029 would still be below where it would have been without the conflict,” Chalmers said.

The pond has done enough interrupting, so here's the Sky Noise down under interruption (still no rebranding?)

Independent analyst Evan Lucas warned Sky News has warned that Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ inflation prediction may be an underestimation. Mr Lucas predicts that “a 6-7 per cent headline inflation figure is definitely on the cards”. “The replenishment isn't there at the levels we need to see it,” he told Sky News Australia. “The cost of fuel in the March read will be astonishing”.

The pond swooned at the astonishing artwork, as the Ughmann carried on ...

On a flying visit to Australia, International Energy Agency executive director Fatih Birol warned world leaders had yet to grasp the scale of the damage done to the “vital arteries of the global economy”.

Here the pond must note another astonishing attempt at relevance, with the reptiles inserting a link to this tweet ...

Presumably some stayed at X to romp with Elon, but the pond ploughed on ...because there's something curiously appealing in the Ughmann's doom-saying, fear-mongering scribbling ...

Why this time is worse
Birol says his agency calculates that the shock from the Gulf war outstrips the twin oil crises of the 1970s, combined with a cut to gas supplies bigger than the one that followed Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The world has lost about 11 million barrels of oil a day, roughly one in every 10 it consumes. And 140 billion cubic metres of gas have evaporated, the equivalent of stripping a major industrial economy’s entire supply out of the global system.
Some of the damage is structural because, in its fight to survive, Iran has bombarded the energy assets of its neighbours. More than 40 oilfields, gas plants and export terminals across the region have been hit.
Even if there were a swift end to the third Gulf war, the world is a long way from turning its oil and gas tap back to anything approaching normal.

And yet all this was Emeritus Chairman approved and encouraged ... Plumes of smoke and fire rise after debris from an intercepted Iranian drone struck an oil facility, in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, on March 14, 2026. Picture: AP

Of course the Ughmann seized the chance to celebrate oil and gas, and to downgrade any idle chat about renewables, EVs and such like ...

Despite the military dominance of the US and Israel, the choke point of the Strait of Hormuz is effectively controlled by Iran. Trade through that waterway now depends on what the bloodied, battered but still unbowed theocratic regime will allow. Even if an agreement to open it were reached tomorrow, trade would take months to normalise.
But you cannot export oil and gas you do not have.
The Economist reported this week that Brent crude, at $US112 a barrel, is 54 per cent higher than before hostilities began. Gas prices in Europe are up by 85 per cent and the damage will not end when the shootingstops. Ships are in the wrong place, insurance has been shredded, production has been cut and refineries that have gone idle cannot be flicked back on like a light switch.
Why recovery will take years
Restoring energy flows is a long industrial relay. Gulf producers must bring damaged or idled output back online. Tankers must be willing and able to return. Refiners in Asia and elsewhere must restart plants that have been starved of crude. None of that happens quickly. Some liquefied natural gas plants, such as Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex, will take years to recover. Even under the best case, The Economist says it could take around four months for markets to regain some semblance of normality.

Another example of the fine work by King Donald, as approved and encouraged by the Emeritus Chairman ... Qatar Ras Laffan complex has been heavily targeted by Iran and will take years to recover. Picture: @sentdefender/X

Now let's hear it for oil and gas ...

Each day Australia wakes up to the reality that oil and gas do far more work in our economy than most people realise. Rising costs are already feeding through to everyday goods. Building materials are climbing sharply as the price of oil-based goods rises. The spike in transport and production costs are moving through the food chain and that will soon be felt at the checkout.
That is how a war in the Gulf turns up in suburban Australia. Not just at the bowser but in the cost of building a home, fixing a pipe or filling a shopping trolley. Hydrocarbons are everywhere; if they do not help make a good, they move it. When their supply is choked, inflation spreads like wildfire.
The pain could get a lot worse. The biggest risk is that the steady flow of more than two vast oil tankers a day is interrupted. If that happens, Australia would be forced into fuel rationing, as others already have. So far the chain has held but the links are straining and the longer the crisis lasts the greater the risks that one will break.
It is worth repeating that it is a national disgrace that a generation of politicians, of all colours, has allowed this country to reach a point where 90 per cent of its liquid fuel is imported. Worse, they assumed the supply lines would never fail and allowed fuel reserves to fall to barely a month’s cover. That is not misfortune. It is an abject policy failure.
We were warned.

And here's what King Donald, with the approval of the Emeritus Chairman, has achieved ... Bulk Carrier Belray near the Strait of Hormuz, March 22, 2026. This critical choke point, now effectively controlled by Iran, poses a significant threat to world energy supplies and leaves Australia’s fuel security exposed. Picture: Getty

Now stand by for more tedious memories ...

We were told this would be fixed
When I left the ABC in 2017, the first story I filed as political editor for Nine News was that Australia was in breach of its obligations to the International Energy Agency to hold 90 days of fuel reserves. My new bosses were a bit bemused by my energy obsession but they humoured me.
I don’t claim credit for the insight. I was persuaded by the argument of a man I had come to know well, former fighter pilot and retired air vice-marshal John Blackburn.
In 2014, Blackburn wrote a report for the NRMA warning that Australia’s fuel reserves were running on empty. This fossil-fuel rich island nation had lost the capacity to produce and refine its own fuel. We had become dangerously dependent on imports, with reserves so thin we were counting tankers at sea as part of our stockpile.
Then, as now, 90 per cent of the liquid fuel that keeps this country running came from overseas. We were told the problem would be fixed by 2026. Clearly, it wasn’t.
Coalition and Labor governments have tinkered at the edges of a solution because the real fix was too expensive, too difficult or too politically inconvenient. The threat always seemed so distant. Now the wolf is at the door.
When the smoke clears, the world will reorder its energy priorities, just as it did in the 1970s. Energy security will again become the central concern of governments everywhere.
The danger for Australia is that we learn the wrong lesson and waste this crisis. The early signs are disturbing.

You mean, get off oil and gas, turn to solar and wind turbines and other forms of renewable energy? Not on your Ughmann nelly ... The Gulf war’s impact reaches suburban Australia, not just at the bowser. Picture: Getty

Time to double down on the addiction, time to embrace the disease and forget the cure ...

The response now taking shape is to double down on an electricity system built on intermittent generation, backed by storage, in the belief that electrifying everything will deliver security. It will not. It risks replacing one vulnerability with another and building a single point of failure into the nation’s operating system.
If that system fails, everything fails with it. And maybe the people who are building this system should ponder whether it is wise that so many of the components in its nervous system are made in China.
The big choice facing Australia now
There is a question almost no one in government or the bureaucracy seems willing to ask. What is the relationship between the kind of energy an economy uses and the productivity it can sustain?
For two centuries growth has been built on dense, reliable energy, first coal, then oil and gas. Now we are shifting towards sources that are diffuse and intermittent, and compensating with vast spending on storage, transmission and backup. That makes the system more complex, more expensive and less predictable.
Is it just coincidence that as this transition has gathered pace, productivity has stalled and costs have risen? Or is there a link we are refusing to confront?
Australia has a choice. It can use the advantages it has in coal, gas, uranium and, potentially, oil or it can squander them.
Yes, the world will become more efficient. Yes, more vehicles will be electric.
And yes, there is an opportunity to expand the mining of the critical minerals that underpin that shift.
But the immediate reality is that the world still runs on hydrocarbons and will for decades to come. With major suppliers of oil and gas shut down there is a clear opportunity for Australia to fill the gap, to strengthen our own economy, and to build security and resilience against future shocks.
We should be producing more energy, not less. We should be expanding exports of coal, LNG and uranium. We should be building nuclear power plants. We should be exploring for oil and developing the capacity to turn coal and gas into liquid fuels.
Above all, we should ensure that this country never again finds itself so exposed.
The lesson is not complicated. The world runs on the dense energy of oil, coal and gas. Ignore that, and the real world will blow up your operating model.
I was a bad student, but Les Roberts was a good teacher. I’d like him to know that, in at least one lesson, I was paying attention.

The Ughmann might think he was paying attention, but he's as completely clueless as the dog botherer and the bromancer, as they drove to the bar...

Now here's what the pond would have liked to be writing about ...

We’ve Stopped Noticing That Trump’s Cabinet Meetings Are Completely Insane

Inter alia...

Here is a partial list of subjects covered by the President of the United States at Thursday’s cabinet meeting:
The obliteration of Iran’s navy. The TSA shutdown. A woman killed in Chicago. The Federal Reserve building renovation. The cost of Sharpie pens. Venezuelan oil revenue. King Charles’s cancer. Gavin Newsom’s self-reported learning disability. Cognitive tests. SCOTUS. The Kennedy Center. California high-speed rail. NATO’s failure to send ships. A thousand-dollar pen that didn’t write. The prime minister of the United Kingdom. Caravans. Sanctuary cities.  The 25th Amendment. A joint venture with Venezuela. Drug smugglers who don’t watch television.
That was one meeting. Ninety-eight minutes. A wartime cabinet briefing.
Here’s what I keep coming back to: if a transcript from this meeting came from the government of Brazil — or Hungary, or any country we cover from a comfortable critical distance — we would not file it as a cabinet meeting. We would write about it as a document. We would ask what it reveals about the man producing it and the institution that has formed around him. We would use different words.
But we don’t use different words for Trump. We stopped a long time ago, so gradually that I’m not sure anyone made a conscious decision to stop. It just became the way the job gets done.

And again ...

Trump Spends Over 5 Minutes on the Cost of Sharpie Pens in Bizarre Cabinet Meeting Riff

And in that spirit ...

And in the dog botherer spirit let's hear it for the women doing their best to look good for the bros ...