The pond leapt on Our Henry like a starving wolf or hound in urgent need of nourishment, with a serve of the best of Western Civilisation.
Sure, the pond hadn't paused to do a survey of this day's lizard Oz offerings, sure the headline ominously warned of a treatise on Gina's pampered pet ...but Thucydides!
The header: Authenticity of Pauline Hanson to keep Labor in power; One Nation’s permanent fixture is eating into the Coalition’s core vote – proving that enduring authenticity beats policy depth.
The caption for the bog standard snap of Gina's pet looking smug and supercilious, if only someone would explain what that word meant: Thirty years after entering parliament, Pauline Hanson’s brand of unabashed authenticity continues to reshape the right side of Australian politics. Picture: Tony Gough
The pond drooled in anticipation.
A bigly five minutes of Our Henry using the very best references from his dictionary of quotes to demolish the bottle-bred ranga:
Newspoll’s August 9 survey has One Nation level with Labor on 29 per cent of the primary vote, with the Coalition sunk to just 18 per cent, its lowest primary vote on record. Roy Morgan a day later had One Nation ahead of Labor, 26 to 25.5 per cent, with the Coalition on 22. Pollsters disagree on who is running second; they all agree that a party founded in an Ipswich fish-and-chip shop is now contesting the lead in the national polls.
In part, Hanson’s rise reflects the old adage: persistence beats resistance. She has been a fixture of Australian politics for three decades, and longevity of that kind converts a personality into a well-known brand.
Familiarity, in turn, provides resilience – not least by undermining the demonisation tactics so effectively deployed against her years ago. A figure who has survived three decades in politics, including a wrongful imprisonment, cannot credibly be portrayed to the electorate as a wild and dangerous quantity; she has already been tried, in every sense of the word, and outlasted the verdict.
Meanwhile, her policies – and One Nation has plenty of them – remain what they have long been: vague in places, ill-judged in others, and sometimes simply unworkable. But it is far from clear how much that now counts against her.
The Australian Election Study asks, at each federal election, whether the major parties “keep their promises”; since 2019, neither party has ever convinced more than 23 per cent of voters that it does. Were the question put today – after changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing that Anthony Albanese had ruled out “for the 50th time” barely a year before – that proportion would surely be lower still.
Little wonder then that no one believes Labor’s National Platform, adopted barely three weeks ago, provides a reliable guide to what Labor will actually do. As for the opposition, try asking Liberal voters what their own party truly stands for.
But it isn’t only policy credibility that has collapsed; party attachment has weakened even more dramatically. In 1990, 4 per cent of Australians said they felt close to no political party; by 2025 that figure had reached an unprecedented 25 per cent, while just 34 per cent said they always voted the same way, a record low. As voters become less attached to party labels, the leader’s own persona plays an ever-increasing role in the political battle.
That factor may be the one that matters most. That Australians are disillusioned with political elites is hardly news: of the 28 major-party leader ratings at elections since 1987, three of the four lowest were recorded in the last three elections. As faith in politicians’ promises has collapsed, so has confidence that they hold any settled convictions at all.
There is, in contrast, no doubt that Hanson has steadfastly remained herself. She has kept raising the same uncomfortable subjects – immigration, multiculturalism, national sovereignty – others chose to ignore. That hardly means she offers good answers. But she at least has the courage to address good questions – and to do so without equivocating.
Well that was disappointing. A kind back-handed approval of Gina's pet for asking good questions, and not a single example of astonishing insights from Western Civilisation.
Even worse, the caption for the sole snap to break up Our Henry's text suggested a dire turn ... Unlike France’s Marine Le Pen, who built a disciplined party machine, Pauline Hanson’s movement remains dependent on a single figure. Picture: AFP
Not Le Pen?!
Is there no one Our Henry might invoke?
Outspokenness and consistency have given her something even rarer in Australian public life than competence: the ring of authenticity. Lionel Trilling brilliantly identified the mechanism more than half a century ago. Sincerity, he argued, asks whether what you say matches what you believe; but once society itself comes to be seen as a stage on which everyone is merely “playing the role of being ourselves”, sincerity no longer guarantees very much at all.
Lionel's a good first step.
The pond immediately rushed off to its book of quotes to be reminded of a thrilling Trilling:
“Insanity is a direct and appropriate response to the coercive inauthenticity of society ... it is an act, expressing the intention of the insane person to meet and overcome to coercive situation; and whether or not it succeed in this intention, it is at least an act of criticism which exposes the true nature of society” ― Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity
And again:
“In any genre it may happen that the first great example contains the whole potentiality of the genre. It has been said that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato. It can be said that all prose fiction is a variation on the theme of Don Quixote.”
It could be said that all lizard Oz columns are but a variation on the theme of Our Henry ... but will there be more astonishing insights from Western Civilisation?
Spoiler alert, the pond was shattered to discover that Our Henry had banished the ancient Greeks and Romans, and any thought of a medieval sage ...not even a Locke or a Burke disturbed the text:
But Hanson is not only unmistakably authentic. As elites drift ever further from everyday Australians, she appears closer than her political rivals to their concerns, their fears and even their hopes. With only a small minority of voters telling the 2025 election study that “people like them” have much influence on government, that makes her authenticity an extraordinarily valuable asset: she seems “something like me” and at least she is not pretending to be anything else.
There is, in that, a striking resemblance to Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s right-wing Rassemblement National (National Rally) party. Like Hanson, she has drawn strength from decades of visible continuity, deployed with systematic discipline to shed a truly demonic image: Le Pen’s own father, the party’s founder, was a Holocaust-denying antisemite with documented links to former Nazis, leaving a political inheritance so toxic that Hanson’s pales beside it.
And Le Pen too offers a clear, stable and unquestionably authentic political identity against leaders the electorate no longer trusts. At a moment when confidence in personal political efficacy has collapsed, voting for her seems the only way to secure the real change other politicians promise but never provide.
The result is that despite a recently upheld conviction, voters have flocked to the RN, placing Le Pen ahead of her rivals for the 2027 presidential election.
There is, nonetheless, a crucial difference. Le Pen did not merely outlast her demonisers. Brick by brick, she built an actual political machine: succession planning well advanced around Jordan Bardella, a leadership team based on tested, long-serving lieutenants, a thorough policy development process, regional strongholds underpinned by ubiquitous local branches.
Reinforced by effective party discipline – “ultras” whose outbursts tarnish the party’s respectability are swiftly shown the door – that machine has made the RN the most cohesive grouping in the National Assembly, bolstering its standing as a potential party of government.
It is that patiently built apparatus that has let Le Pen push deep into the electorate of Les Républicains, turning an insurgency on the centre-right’s flank into a formidable bid to supplant it.
That transformation of periodic outbursts of electoral discontent into a disciplined, ongoing party machine is the whole difference between a mere disrupter and a genuine political force – and it is the one test Hanson has never passed. Thirty years in, One Nation still has no comparable depth of leadership talent, no equivalent network of trusted lieutenants, no plausible provision for a post-Hanson succession, and nothing resembling RN-style control over its own candidates.
Familiarity and authenticity have made Hanson a permanent feature of the landscape; they have not made her a government-in-waiting.
And with little sign that the Liberals have gotten their act together, she may well do to an unreformed Coalition exactly what the polls suggest – hollow it out, seat by seat, without posing a serious threat to Labor’s hold on office.
The real risk is therefore not that Pauline Hanson wins. It is that her rise simply guarantees Australians three more years of misery – a misery we now know so very well, and need so very little.
Sheesh, what a dismal, mediocre offering, with nary a hint of Plato or Socrates. Not a word about aspiring tyrannos? Couldn't Our Henry have spared a word for Cypselus of Corinth?
Instead the hole in bucket man sounded as if he'd overdosed on a dozen reptile offerings of the "Ned" kind.
Perhaps the pond should have begun by doing that survey of lizard Oz offerings ... but alas and alack, the lizard Oz "ticking clock" routine had been merely to announce the arrival of yet another bog standard true crime piece ...
The pond's YouTube logarithms are saturated with True Crime, so the pond only dipped in to the one piece of prose available on the matter:
On a cold winter’s afternoon, two journalists knock on Donna’s door to ask about a decades-old murder mystery. She was ready to break her silence.
By Hedley Thomas
The pond did its best to stifle a yawn.
This is the way the lizard Oz is going to save itself?
On the other hand, perhaps that was more interesting than the reptiles indulging in their basic "news" jihad at the top of the digital page, ma...
For the record the reptiles had cunningly contrived to avoid having their lead story archived, but it contained a compelling message from the beefy boofhead, and so that at least needed to be clipped ...
How could the pond miss that opening image, and at least a little of the copy that followed?
The rag really is state opposition media in waiting ... and so it was something of a tragedy that the devilish reptiles had tricked the intermittent archive into a "page not found" routine.
When a page could be found in the archive, the pond quailed in misery...
Bailouts and welfare ‘drag us down’, say top economists
Former top Treasury officials and leading economists have urged Labor to tighten its fiscal rules as Australia’s gross federal debt briefly surpassed $1 trillion for the first time.
By Jack Quail
Strange, the reptiles routinely warn the hive mind of dangerous 'leets and so-called experts.
Lo, after the pond had quivered and quailed, there came the mug punter's friend, as the indefatigable Geoff, chambered away ...
Jim shouts at the clouds, as Labor’s economic narrative falters
The Treasurer is a walking, talking propaganda machine who Labor colleagues and business leaders fear is losing control.
A reptile who could invoke "shouting at clouds" deserves a spot at the pond, even if it's just a link to the archive.
For entertainment purposes only, the reptiles even resorted to dragging out a moth-eaten relic ...
John Howard has condemned Labor’s attacks on former Liberal staffer Fiona Brown and noted the ‘inexcusable contradiction’ that then-PM Scott Morrison apologised to Brittany Higgins.
By Janet Albrechtsen and Stephen Rice
Of course, it had to be Dame Slap and a rather gluggy Rice keeping that ancient jihad going.
This is one of the sturdiest reptile jihads, a never ending story, and it served only to distract from a more recent jihad, melongate ...
Six weeks on, PM admits his appearance on racy podcast was an error.
Over on the extreme far right, the meretricious Merritt turned up with a bog standard contribution to the Australian Daily Zionist News:
How one judge perceives the great public policy issue of our time: antisemitism and hatred of Israel.
By Chris Merritt
Legal Affairs Contributor
Note the cunning way that the malicious Merritt's headline had managed to confuse and conflate anti-Semitism with a hatred of Israel, as if the sight of ethnic cleansing could be sneezed away.
A fine example of pedantry would follow, but the pond was immediately disturbed and distracted by a hint of heresy in Cameron's offering ...
Australia right to call out Israel over refusal to launch criminal probe into aid worker deaths
Israel’s military has cleared its own soldiers of a crime over the killing of seven aid workers, including Australian Zomi Frankcom. Australia is correct to say that is not good enough.
By Cameron Stewart
Chief International Correspondent
The pond was so astonished it saved Cameron to the archive and clipped him as well ...
Cameron had questions to ask, and while they were just about a single Australian, and while abuses of this kind happen on a daily basis in Gaza and the West Bank, it was a baby step that deserved some encouragement.
Ask away Cameron ...
The wrong mindset? But what if ethnic cleansing and genocide is the mindset?
Even so, it was remarkable, a deploring of the IDF and support for Wong and Albo. It was as if the pond had stumbled into an alternative universe.
There was an immortal Rowe to help Cameron with that ...
And so to the real bonus, and of course it had to be Killer Creighton.
The pond can hear the whining. What happened to the big fuss about the Swans? Sorry, down the page.
Why do I have to head over to another place for a beguiling tale about cultists in action?
Moan away. You can't expect the lizard Oz cultists to cover another cult.
What about the latest from ICAC?
Sorry, the reptiles love to bury that well down the page. You have to go elsewhere ...
What about the Emeritus Chairman, who had entranced the ABC this morning?
Murdoch family succession drama laid bare in unsealed court documents
"Rupert Murdoch was brought into the plan … under the false assumption that James Murdoch was 'making trouble' by fuelling press speculation about governance of the [Murdoch Family Trust] after Rupert Murdoch's passing," he wrote.
But Commissioner Gorman said Rupert's beliefs about James's dealings with the press were "unsubstantiated".
In one example, the commissioner said Lachlan and others within the company believed James, or someone acting on his behalf, had leaked information to Financial Times journalist Alex Barker about the details of the family trust.
But Commissioner Gorman wrote: "At trial, Lachlan Murdoch admitted that he did not have any proof that James Murdoch or his associates had briefed Alex Barker."
A similar suspicion arose around a book published around that time called The Successor, an unauthorised biography of Lachlan written by Australian journalist Paddy Manning, now an investigative reporter at the ABC.
But the evidence in Reno pointed elsewhere. Commissioner Gorman found that for Manning's book, Lachlan's own adviser, Ms McKenna, had been a significant source, giving more than 14 hours of interviews plus follow-up correspondence.
"The evidence demonstrates that Lachlan Murdoch falsely told his father, without proof, that James Murdoch or his associates were sources for The Successor," the commissioner wrote.
"He did not tell his father that Siobhan McKenna had been involved, with his authorisation."
Commissioner Gorman also described Rupert's concern that his younger son would vehemently oppose Project Family Harmony.
"They assumed James Murdoch would be 'very hostile to this and would basically pull out the stops to block it,'" he wrote.
Forget it Jake, it's reptile town, we all know it's a Succession snake pit, and Lachy's one of the most poisonous snakes.
Spare a thought for Killer.
Everyone knows that the poor lad has never been the same since someone demanded he wear a mask during Covid ... so attention must be paid.
The header: States, Canberra to go over Covid cliff ‘all in debt together’; Ultra-low interest bonds issued during the pandemic are set to expire from 2030, threatening to add billions in interest burdens.
The caption for a splendid piece of art by Frank that lifted Killer's piece into distinguished, rarefied MOMA territory: Federal and state debts are set to pass $2 trillion as ultra-low pandemic bond rates expire post-2030. Sources: Supplied and iStock. Artwork by Frank Ling
Killer used Covid as a metaphor for an "we're all rooned" outing that put Dame Groan firmly in her place as a rank amateur:
Come 2030 and beyond, though, it’s guaranteed to flare up with a vengeance. Our governments borrowed like there was no tomorrow during the Covid pandemic, issuing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of bonds during 2020 and 2021 at ultra-low interest rates to “keep us safe”.
The full price of that dubious safety is yet to be paid, years after anyone who was “saved” has long passed away.
The federal government’s gross liabilities this week bobbed above $1 trillion for the first time, but that’s only the tip of the growing debt iceberg.
For a start, state governments’ non-financial public sector balance sheets reveal another $706bn as of June, and those debts are no less “public” than Canberra’s.
But even those figures underplay the challenge ahead, obscuring the great Covid debt refinancing cliff that awaits beyond the customary four-year budget forecast period.
The four biggest states have almost $277bn of bonds outstanding, with coupons, or interest costs, averaging around 2 per cent, according to new research by the Institute of Public Affairs, released this week.
When those sweet deals progressively expire from 2031, they’ll need to be refinanced at current long-term borrowing rates, which for state governments are around 5.5 per cent for 10 years, adding well over $8bn a year to their annual interest costs.
Each of NSW and Victoria, for instance, will be up for an extra $2.7bn a year from 2030 onwards, even if they decided to abruptly become fiscal saints and never run a cash deficit again.
This will amount to around a 25 per cent jump over and above the $11bn of interest costs they’ve each budgeted for the 2030 financial year.
To put that in perspective, the entirety of Victoria’s payroll and insurance taxes will be just about enough to cover the state’s annual interest bill.
South Australia’s annual interest burden would be able to fund its police force more than twice over.
The commonwealth faces the same problem, too, having around $280bn of cheap Covid-era debt on the books at a coupon of 3 per cent or less.
Toby Johnston, former chief economist of the Future Fund, estimates those bonds will cost an extra $9.5bn a year from 2030 on, assuming the federal government faces today’s prevailing 10-year yield of 5 per cent.
Of course, interest rates could well be higher still, given grim forecasts embedded in practically every government balance sheet in the developed world.
“The global bond market is sending a clear signal to all governments – get your house in order or face much higher debt service costs,” Johnston, now director of Westwood Strategic Advisers, tells me.
“Every additional dollar spent servicing past debt is a dollar that cannot be used to fund services, reduce taxes or invest in the national’s future,” he adds.
Even before the great Covid refinancing cliff begins to ratchet up, combined state and federal debts will push past $2 trillion, according to forecasts by the Parliamentary Budget Office released this week.
Almost certainly this will understate the actual fiscal deterioration, given the “degree of systematic optimism” built into budget forecasts, as PBO chief Sam Reinhardt put it in a speech last month.
The reptiles interrupted with a terrifying snap, showing exactly why Killer had suffered so, way back when, a suffering that had left an ineradicable scar: Signs and tape baring (sic) people from an empty Bondi Beach in March 2020. Picture: Damian Shaw
No doubt some wag thought the pond might have had some fun with "baring", but this is serious people.
Killer is in pain, and suffering from a rare kind of long Covid dementia:
One good example is the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which was meant to have around 300,000 participants, rather than the 780,000 it had as of June.
Apologists for Australia’s soaring public debt often point to its supposedly low level as a share of GDP compared to other countries (about 50 per cent including the six states). Yet the stock of debt matters little. Canada has gross debts the equivalent to well over 100 per cent of its GDP yet enjoys a 10-year bond yield of 3.7 per cent, well below Canberra’s. New Zealand has been borrowing at a cheaper interest rate than Australia too for some time.
The world keeps Australia on a tighter fiscal leash, and for good reason: we’re a smaller, remote economy, whose economic viability would be torn asunder by a clash between China and the US in the Pacific.
Our biggest export customer is the number one geopolitical enemy of our most important military ally.
The Australian dollar isn’t a reserve currency, and we have a chronic inflation problem that predates the US-Iran war too.
A cursory look at state and federal budget management reveals appalling levels of waste and stupidity, best illustrated by the massive increases in public sector headcount and pay, at state and federal levels. Indeed practically all economic growth has been in the public sector, and in particular the highly regulated and relatively unproductive “care economy”.
The treatment for financial Long Covid will be painful, and it won’t be optional: significant cuts in spending along the lines Australia hasn’t seen before.
Why chose this sort of painful metaphor and hammer it to death?
It's the masks, Killer has never recovered from the masks or the need to talk about vaccines ...
State and federal governments have planned bond issuance this year of some $235bn, the highest amount since the 12 months to June 2021.
Back then the Reserve Bank was helping keep borrowing costs down by creating billions of dollars of new money. That will be much harder to do in coming years, given the growing loss of faith in the monetary system throughout the developed world.
At least more economic commentators are coming to realise that the nation’s real public-debt burden extends far beyond Canberra to the states. What more need to realise is that Canberra is ultimately on the hook for the lot of it.
And so to the wringing of that metaphor's chicken neck:
Adam Creighton is IPA chief economist.
