The pond just knew that the reptiles would stitch up the pond with a late breaking prattle by Polonius, but how could an aging, irrelevant columnist ignore a feeble bit of attention-seeking by a politician torn by internal ructions?
And so and thusly, how could the pond ignore same and send Polonius off to the archive cornfield, when a better way would be a late arvo posting celebrating the latest folly?
Straight into it ... with the reward a chance to observe Polonius attempting an our Henry on Australian history ...
The header: Foreign policy rifts echo through history, minister, Penny Wong fumed at Sussan Ley’s letter to US Republicans voicing opposition to Australia’s recognition of Palestine, but many precedents suggest Ley’s action was anything but ‘rogue’.
The caption for the Queen Victoria joke (attribution only, and a "we" would have been better): Penny Wong was not amused. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
Polonius began by outlining his understanding of the matter to hand:
Reference to the national interest in democratic politics is invariably embraced by governments rather than oppositions. Democracy, after all, is the resolution of conflict by nonviolent means following a contest of ideas between various interests. It is governments that invariably prevail in the battle of ideas. Foreign Minister Penny Wong was interviewed by Sally Sara on ABC Radio National last Tuesday. She was asked about a letter that Sussan Ley had sent to some Republican members of the US Congress concerning the decision by the Albanese Labor government to recognise a Palestinian state. On September 19, 25 Republicans, including senators Ted Cruz and Joni Ernst, wrote to the prime ministers of Australia, Canada and Britain and the President of France, describing their decision to “unilaterally recognise a Palestinian state” as “reckless policy that undermines prospects for peace”. A copy of the letter was sent to President Donald J. Trump and to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The reptiles interrupted this lecture from behind the arras with a snap of the enfeebled and surrounded attention-seeker, Sussan Ley wrote to US Congress criticising Australia’s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood.
Now the key word here is "wrote".
Back in the day a letter was a meaningful communication, and a boon to stamp collectors, and way above some politician barnstorming around the country shouting how wrong the government's foreign policy was.
This will come as news to vulgar youff, who, pace Dame Slap's beefing reported earlier this day, spend their days texting each other (when not sexting).
Incidentally, whatever happened to stamp collecting?
The pond can still remember the excitement when it picked up a penny Big Red and added it to its collection, with dreams of selling it for a small fortune in some twenty years time, when its value would have increased by squillions ...
Now you can pick it up for a buck on Ebay. So it goes ...
Sorry, the pond digresses.
Back to official letters as a meaningful form of communication, and naturally the pond looked to Polonius to provide evidence of opposition leaders writing letters to heads of government of other countries:
For her part, the federal Opposition Leader wrote to the US signatories advising that “the federal opposition opposes this decision and would reverse it should we form government”. Asked by Sara about Ley’s approach, Wong was not amused. She had this to say: “The opposition of Australia running a rogue foreign policy is not in the nation’s interests. You know, we are (at) Australia’s strongest when our country speaks with one voice; and I think Australians know that, and it is a pity that Sussan Ley does not.” When asked what she meant by this, the Foreign Minister replied: “It is possible to back Australia and still be an effective opposition.” It is understandable why Wong was annoyed by Ley’s intervention. After all, the UN heads of state and government meeting was underway in the General Assembly in New York and Anthony Albanese had just formally announced Australia’s decision with respect to a Palestinian state. However, the historical evidence suggests that Ley is anything but a “rogue” Opposition Leader when it comes to foreign policy. There are, after all, many precedents on the Labor Party side of Australian national politics in opposing foreign policy decisions by governments. Labor supported Britain during World War I (1914-18). However, it opposed the conscription of Australian men to reinforce the First Australian Imperial Force on the frontline. This was essentially a foreign policy decision over which Labor split in 1916. From opposition, Labor opposed conscription.
Yes, yes, all very well, and all very important, but where's the letter from the opposition leader to the Brits' PM explaining that they had no time for trench warfare?
At this point, the reptiles interrupted with another snap HV Evatt with British PM Winston Churchill in England in 1943.
That suggested that Polonius might dig up a letter between the pair ...but before proceeding, the pond must regretfully interrupt Polonius by noting that none of the matters he discusses notably seemed to include action by way of official letter.
And an official letter, once upon a time, meant something.
The pond provided an archive link so that correspondents could see that it was real, and that it began thusly ...
Traditions are solutions to problems we forgot we had. Ironically it took a friend to recently remind me of this saying because it is one that we all need to urgently remember. Nowhere is tradition more important than in Australian politics, which is as much governed by convention as it is the letters in our constitution. And the most vital tradition of them all is that whatever divisions the government and opposition of the day might have on domestic matters, when it comes to the rest of the world, Australia presents a united front. Even if there are strong disagreements on foreign policy itself, the convention has always been that these are debated and resolved in parliament and in the domestic sphere. That is to say never airing grievances on the international stage and absolutely never, under any circumstances, involving foreign governments in domestic disputes. Indeed, the only thing worse than either of those two cardinal sins would be to tell a foreign power that you are on its side instead of Australia’s. This week Sussan Ley violated all three of these vital rules and thus proved that she is not only unfit to ever be prime minister – an academic argument if ever there was one – but also unfit to be Leader of the Opposition. Indeed, the very role of opposition appears to be as foreign to her as the powers she is courting. The whole Westminster system, upon which Australia’s parliamentary democracy is predicated, is based on the concept of “His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition” – namely that you can have free and robust debate between the government and the alternative government only if both are unquestionably loyal to the state. By writing to US Republicans to declare that the Coalition would overturn the Australian government’s recognition of Palestine, possibly at the behest of the Israeli government – with whom Ley had a highly unusual phone call at around the same time – Ley has been anything but loyal. Treachery would be a better word for it, perhaps even treason. Ley has told one, perhaps two, foreign powers that the opposition is on their side – not Australia’s. To be clear, this is not about whether the decision to recognise Palestine is right or wrong – I have publicly and repeatedly voiced grave concerns about it myself. But the place to do that is in Australia, and the people to do it to are Australians. The one thing you don’t do is effectively invite foreign interference into Australian politics and – ultimately – Australian elections. It is frankly incomprehensible that Ley or those advising her would not be able to grasp this fundamental principle. If they were so hopelessly ignorant of the implications, that alone would be grounds for mass sackings, herself included.
Treachery? Or even treason?!!
And the fire's coming from inside the usually Lib-friendly Daily Terror house?!
The pond threw another another blue tongue on the lettuce, with the odds shortening by the day ...
Um, okay, on the upside, maybe the lettuce will deliver where the stamp collection failed.
Now back to Polonius's feeble attempts at justifying treachery and treason ...
Labor supported the decision of the conservative government led by Robert Menzies to declare war on Nazi Germany in September 1939. However, when in opposition, Labor under the leadership of John Curtin did not support the decision of the Menzies government to dispatch the Second Australian Imperial Force to engage in battle against German and Italian forces in the northern hemisphere. In 1950, the Menzies Coalition government decided to send military assets to Malaya to assist British and New Zealand forces in the defence of the British colony against a communist insurgency. Australia’s forces were increased in 1955 and 1957 and some remained in place until 1963 during what was called the Malayan Emergency. In 1955 the Labor Party split again – on this occasion partly because of attitudes to communism. Labor leader Bert Evatt declared that Australia’s role in the defence of Malaya “will be easily misrepresented as an act of aggression”. It wasn’t. In 1957, the Australia-Japan Commerce Agreement was signed. This was one of the most important civil treaties in Australian history and of benefit to both parties. An initiative of the Coalition government and supported by the Democratic Labor Party that emerged from the Labor split of 1955, it was opposed by Labor. Labor leader Evatt told the House of Representatives on August 28, 1957, that “the treaty should not be adopted”. He was supported by Jim Cairns, a prominent member of the Labor Left.
Still no letters, just idle verbiage of the kind Polonius loves?
Telling on the government in the House of Reps is what every opposition tattletale has done since the farce began way back when.
Where are the bloody letters?!
Never mind, the reptiles seized the chance to offer up a snap of Ming the Merciless, as they always do, what with their devotion to live behind 1950s picket fences, Sir Robert Menzies, pictured in 1950. Picture: National Library of Australia
Inspired by Ming, the pond thought it would finish off Joe's rant:
...If they knew the gravity of their actions and did it anyway, that would be grounds for something worse. Thankfully for them the punishment for high treason no longer carries the death penalty. Even more worrying for the Liberal Party is that this act was not just morally reprehensible but politically insane. Fresh off a record low Newspoll of 27 per cent for the Coalition, and an election result that may have wiped it out for a decade or more, Ley’s response has been to re-hitch her party’s fortunes to the millstone that dragged it to its current depths. Amid the myriad missteps on the Green Mile that led the Coalition to its current oblivion was the perception that it was on Donald Trump’s side more than it was Australia’s. This was a constant fluttering red flag in all of Labor’s research and the ALP’s historic haul of 94 seats – including Peter Dutton’s – circled the national mood with a sea of red ink. To sidle up with Trump’s Republicans against Australia again is, as one lyrical judge famously said, the very definition of Daniel escaping the lion’s den and then going back for his hat. As that case continues to prove, miscalculations don’t come much more disastrous than that. And to make matters worse – were that even possible – the opposition’s divide-and-conquer cosy-up was done on the ever-misguided assumption that there was an existential rift between Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump. Since Ley’s spectacularly crude faceplant, the Prime Minister has gone from being painted as a US pariah to having a face-to-face and handshake with the Prez, with a follow-up phone call and now an official state meeting in the Oval Office next month. What a huge difference a day makes. This is a joyous occasion for the Australia-US alliance and a clear triumph for democracy and diplomacy. Ley’s dangerous and ludicrous letter proves she knows nothing about either.
Well the pond's not exactly celebrating the chance to meet up with the Cantaloupe Caligula, with the chances of a demented ravaging high, and an invitation to share his values ...
Whatever, there was that note ....
...this act was not just morally reprehensible but politically insane.
Back to the increasingly desperate Polonius, desperately trying to drum up precedents for the insane inclination to treason and treachery ...
Moving into more recent times, in September 1965 the Menzies government committed Australian military forces, in support of the US, to defend (then) non-communist South Vietnam against (then) communist North Vietnam. What is now called the Australian Defence Force remained in Vietnam until all combat troops were withdrawn by the William McMahon-led Coalition government in 1971. Only a few military advisers were in South Vietnam when Gough Whitlam’s Labor government came to office in December 1972. Labor, under the leadership of Arthur Calwell and, later Whitlam, vehemently opposed Australia’s Vietnam commitment. Moreover, Labor MP Cairns effectively led Australia’s opposition to the Vietnam commitment. And there’s more. In early 2003 the John Howard-led Coalition committed the Australian military to what was called the coalition of the willing (Australia, Britain, the US and Poland) to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. Speaking at the National Press Club in March 2003, Labor leader Simon Crean said: “As I speak, we are a nation on the brink of war; a war we should not be in.” By mid-2004, Mark Latham was Labor leader. He committed Labor to withdrawing Australian forces from Iraq if it defeated the Howard-led Coalition government in the forthcoming 2004 election.
Disagreements aplenty, that being the nature of the game, but still no letters in the mix. The reptiles did throw in another snap, In 2022, a spokeswoman for Senator Wong said the government had not made any decision on changing official recognition of Israel’s capital. Picture: AFP
Meanwhile, Joe had referenced other odd behaviour, another story in the Terror, but it wasn't a letter, it was only an indiscreet phone call ...
FWIW(less than a penny Red), here's the front bit ...
Mischief-making, but hey, it's good to know that the opposition is all in on ethnic cleansing and genocide, not to mention mass starvation as a war tactic, and incidentally a war crime.
And it was no letter, it was just a foreign power seeking to interfere with a willing opposition, attempting to justify its genocide by blathering about leftist governments ...
...It was put to Ms Ley on Tuesday that many of Australia’s staunchest allies, such as Canada and the UK, had also officially recognised Palestine. Ms Ley said Australia should follow the US’s lead on foreign policy. “We should always stand up for Australia’s national interest, and that aligns us with our major ally, the US,” she told Nine’s Today. Similarly, Mr Wallace said there were “very strong left governments that are being led in the UK and in Canada at the moment” and that Anthony Albanese “has jumped on the bandwagon with these left wing governments”.
Follow the US's lead? She'd better make sure she doesn't step into some cement ...
Never mind, it was just an indiscreet phone call, not a treasonous official communication by way of letter.
Back to Polonius, still seeking letters like some villain in a Victorian romance ...
And now to modern times. In October 2018, the Scott Morrison-led Coalition government indicated that Australia would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. At the time, as now, Australia’s embassy in Israel was based in Tel Aviv. Specifics were never announced. But it was assumed that any move to change the embassy’s location would have been to West Jerusalem, which has been part of Israel since 1948 and is the location of the Israeli parliament and supreme court. This decision was strongly contested by Wong in her capacity as Labor’s foreign spokeswoman. At the time Wong declared: “Foreign policy and Australia’s national interest are far too important to be played with in this fashion.” She added that “all Australians deserve a leader who puts the national interest ahead of his self-interest and governs in the best long-term interest of the nation”. The historical message seems to be that oppositions – whether Coalition or Labor – oppose government foreign policy on occasions. This Wong should well remember. Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.
This is probably the silliest and stupidest column Polonius has scribbled in some considerable time. No wonder the reptiles tried to hide it away ...
There's a wilful obfuscation and blurring of what used to be a potent means of communication, an official letter on official letterhead, with the usual round of domestic politics, where foreign affairs are just one topic for grievances and insults hurled across the chamber, the standard sort of barney that's been going on for decades...
What a dissembler he is, but as he's aged, how pitiful, decrepit and enfeebled he's become...
Meanwhile, the pond would surely have been left behind, but what a world it would have been without King Donald and his Xian minions (and maybe Polonius would have gone too) ...
Susssan wrote an official letter in support of a fascist state? Is it odd to link fascism to the current government of Israel? Perhaps not so much, what with black-clad goons roaming the streets dishing out violence to the helpless ...
Those who miss the aged pedant can still use that as a temporary fix (straight to the eyeball).
Perhaps it's a cunning ruse, a way to foil the pond, a way to make Polonius's late entrance stage right seem grand. The pond will check back and if Polonius steps out from behind the arras, the pond will do a late post.
In the meantime, the pond must make do with substitutes, standbys, stop gaps, understudies, locum tenens as it were ... and inevitably the quality will turn even more abysmal.
Perhaps an opening distraction in the Polonial spirit?
The pond was enchanted by Cathy Young's celebration of Animal Farm's 80th birthday, including her proposal that, while it was about Stalin, it was also about others with a taste for Stalinism ...‘Animal Farm’ Never Gets Old:
...in 2025, Americans may be reading this novel with somewhat different eyes than in times gone by, when strongman rule, cult-like worship of leaders, and reality-denying propaganda were things that happened somewhere else. Today, it’s hard to read Orwell’s mordant description of the extravagant panegyrics to Napoleon (“two cows, enjoying a drink at the pool, would exclaim, ‘Thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon, how excellent this water tastes!’”) and not think of the examples we are witnessing daily—from the downright idolatrous sensibility common among Trump’s base to administration officials falling all over each other to heap praise on Trump at a cabinet meeting, or a member of Congress telling reporters Trump is “never wrong,” or press secretary Karoline Leavitt gushing, “Cracker Barrel is a great American company, and they made a great decision to Trust in Trump!” Likewise, when Orwell wryly notes that the animals “had nothing to go upon except Squealer’s lists of figures, which invariably demonstrated that everything was getting better and better,” one can’t help thinking of Trump firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner who wouldn’t deliver that message. The rewriting of slogans, the insidious conspiracies invoked to explain anything that goes wrong, the propaganda chief convincing the other animals that things they saw with their own eyes didn’t happen or happened very differently: The parallels are all over the place. You could even point out that, like Orwell’s animal revolution, Trumpian populism purports to champion the downtrodden and the scorned. And Trump’s cozy huddle with Vladimir Putin last month evokes the novel’s haunting last line in which the animals “looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Well yes ... there are cartoons for that ...
While mentioning Stalin, a nod to one of the pond's favourite movies, The Death of Stalin, with an honourable mention to Peter Duncan's rarely noted off the wall black comedy Children of the Revolution, starring a bonkers Judy Davis carrying Stalin's child.
Alas, pleasures end all too quickly, and so the pond must do a quick survey of some reptile contenders pleading for attention, but again the pond had to rule out assorted reptile jihads ... like this one, an alleged "EXCLUSIVE" ...
EXCLUSIVE Cancelled again for crossing the trans crusade Greens patriarch Drew Hutton faces a fresh setback as a crowd-funding platform mysteriously suspends his campaign to fight expulsion from the party he co-founded. By Jamie Walker
Just because he's an alleged greenie doesn't stop him being a silly old bigot. Off to the cornfield archive with him ...
The pond also had no time for this outing, a man defending a genocide and lying his socks off ...
Sensible people walked out on him, and the pond sent him to the cornfield archive, but did have a cartoon to celebrate his singular achievement, down there with Adolf's treatment of the Warsaw ghetto ...
The final touch to finish it off completely would be to put Tony Bleagh in charge, doing an East India company administrator impression.
Moving on, remarkably the reptiles have only just managed to catch up this aged, distant English fuss, by deploying a local angle.
Sorry Ros, it's old and tired and stale, and so it's off to comrade Jennie doing her climate science denying, renewables hating riff ...
She's not the Ughmann, she's no Lloydie of the Amazon, but she'll have to do ... even if devotees will find it remarkably similar to previous outings ...
The header: Why Labor’s renewables transition fails the reliability test, Labor’s targets-driven energy transition, built on ‘magic pudding economics’, threatens deindustrialisation and a ‘Future Made in Australia’. With a nuclear ban in a resource-rich nation, the current path defies common sense.
The caption: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. We’re facing serious deindustrialisation due mainly to the high cost of energy and the loss of our comparative advantage. Picture: Jason Edwards / NewsWire
It's like putting on a pair of old slippers, of the kind the pond wore back on 25th August when comrade Jennie's bees were buzzing in the old noggin ...
(Naturally that one began with a snap of sinister whale killing windmills down Goulburn way)
Same old, same old, same as it ever was ...
The Albanese government is determined to press ahead with an energy transition based on intermittent, weather-dependent renewables regardless of cost and emerging problems. The 2035 targets are politically determined, set at 62-70 per cent, even though Labor’s 2030 targets won’t be met. Setting higher targets can’t mask the fundamental problems of a targets-driven transition. It will satisfy an international audience but will fail our domestic needs. The 2030 targets are enshrined in legislation; the 43 per cent reduction in emissions are underpinned by 82 per cent renewables, on the way to net zero by 2050. These targets are based on commissioned RepuTex modelling, once lauded as “the most comprehensive modelling ever done, for any policy, by any opposition in Australia’s history”. When it became clear that promises made would be promises broken, the RepuTex modelling was abandoned. This was a convenient political solution, shifting the blame for not delivering the promised $275 cut in electricity prices by 2025, the impending failure to meet the 2030 emissions target, and a promised further cut of $378 and 604,000 new green jobs. Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen remains blind to reality, unable to deal with the problems that have emerged. Our economy can’t be powered by intermittent, weather-dependent renewables, nor are they the cheapest form of energy when whole-of-system costs are included. That’s why the government refuses to release full costings. Without the billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies and relief packages, Labor’s transition would have collapsed by now, and still may. It’s magic pudding economics and it’s not sustainable.
The beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way turned up in an AV distraction dancing with Caleb ... Shadow defence minister Angus Taylor discusses Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s UN address concerning climate. “We do support getting a seat on the Security Council … on emissions, can I say that they have set targets for 2035 that are completely unrealistic?” Mr Taylor told Sky News host Caleb Bond. “I got prices down by 10 per cent and emissions down by 10 per cent in my time as energy minister; Chris Bowen is nowhere near achieving that.”
Comrade Jennie did her old rat in the ranks routine ...
The billions spent and misspent in pursuit of Labor’s plans remain shrouded in secrecy. It’s in breach of the public’s right to know. All the renewable projects are underwritten by taxpayers in off-budget secret contracts that leave only the Australian National Audit Office to protect the public interest. The mantra that renewables are the cheapest form of energy started with the promised $275 cut in electricity prices and Anthony Albanese’s assurance it would be delivered: “Well I don’t think, I know. I know because we have done the modelling.” Ever since, power prices have gone through the roof, the queues in energy poverty keep growing and industry is hard hit by energy prices that are among the world’s highest. The $275 broken promise remains emblematic of a failing transition.
The reptiles then distracted with an incredibly informative and relevant illustration, The $275 broken promise remains emblematic of a failing transition. Picture: iStock
Really, reptiles, that's the best you can do?
Sadly, the lizard Oz once had a graphics department, now it's dedicated to visual slush, though that at least matches Comrade Jennie's inclination to verbal slop...
Based on experience, Labor’s assurances can’t be taken at face value. Don’t believe the spin. We’re not on track to meet the 2030 targets based on the modelling that has since been abandoned. The Prime Minister was desperate to avoid this issue in the lead-up to his government’s re-election. He tried to shift responsibility, saying: “Our energy policy offering is all out there. RepuTex modelling was RepuTex modelling that they put out.” The journalist persisted: “Why are they still your targets if you are distancing yourself from the model?” There was no answer. Too often, asking difficult questions, raising concerns or criticisms, has led to accusations of spreading misinformation, being climate deniers and now “cookers and crackpots”. Masking the truth never works. It won’t detract from economist Ross Garnaut’s conclusion that the 2030 targets won’t be met, falling short by a “large margin”, or similar assessments by experts at Wood Mackenzie and Rystad Energy. No one can guarantee that power prices will fall because the brief of the Australian Energy Market Operator is to deliver Labor’s legislated targets. It’s a targets-driven energy transition. From the start, the priority was never to deliver the most affordable and reliable power 24/7. These parameters are defined by the legislation, no matter what promises are made about power prices falling in future. There’s no chance prices will fall with the costs of 10,000km of new transmission and huge projects such as HumeLink still to be passed on in our bills. With even higher targets, the crunch will come at a critical time, when 90 per cent of our coal-fired power leaves the system across the next decade. Labor cannot guarantee this lost capacity will be replaced by reliable and affordable baseload power 24/7, ensuring the lights stay on. We’re facing serious deindustrialisation due mainly to the high cost of energy and the loss of our comparative advantage. A Future Made in Australia is on shifting sands. We’re the only G20 nation with a nuclear ban and a closed door on next-generation technologies such as small modular reactors. Just days ago Britain and the US entered a partnership to deploy SMRs by the early 2030s. The energy demands of the new world of artificial intelligence, data centres and quantum computing will be met worldwide by nuclear energy.
Huzzah, she went the SMR, nuking the country to save the planet routine, and the reptiles helped out ... The Three Mile Island nuclear power near Middletown, Pennsylvania. The planned reopening of the plant is praised as a boon for Pennsylvania and a boost for AI. Picture: AFP
If the pond might be so bold, it isn't the average consumer who will benefit ...
If Three Mile Island comes back online, Microsoft will be the one benefiting, as its long-term power purchase agreement would secure it enough energy to power roughly 800,000 homes every year. Except in this case, it’ll be used to help run the company’s data center infrastructure in the region. This isn’t the first recent sign Big Tech is jumping in on nuclear power: Earlier this year, Amazon purchased a data center site right next to the Susquehanna nuclear power plant, also in Pennsylvania. While Amazon will use only part of the output of the Susquehanna plant, Microsoft will buy all the power that Three Mile Island produces. That raises the question of who’s paying for what in this whole arrangement. Ratepayers won’t be expected to shoulder any of the costs to restart the facility, Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez told the Washington Post. The company also won’t seek any special subsidies from the state, he added. (here, WaPo story archived here)
But that's comrade Jennie for you, always concerned for big tech and the need to nuke the country to service their needs ...
In a country blessed with energy resources, we’re stuck with a nuclear ban stretching back almost 30 years while building an energy system based on intermittent, weather-dependent renewables and batteries. It makes no sense. It’s never too late to put our nation’s interests centre stage. Energy is the economy and energy security is national security. Only a strong economy can secure our future prosperity. It’s time to lift the nuclear ban and to test the market. Jennie George is a former ACTU president and former Labor member for Throsby.
Ah comrade Jennie ... well played ...
After nuking the country, the pond decided as a bonus that it was time to nuke common sense.
Come on down Dame Slap...
The header: The post-literate peril: What if we aren’t just reading less, we are also thinking less? The dawn of the post-literate society ought to make us think long and hard – while we still can.
The caption for the hideously banal image, which suggests the reptiles are pushing visual illiteracy ... We are only just coming to grips with the consequences of people, especially teenagers, reading fewer books than previous generations. Picture: iStock
The reptiles assured the pond it was a nine minute read, enough to test anyone's patience.
Before beginning, the pond would like to draw attention to a piece by David A. Graham in The Atlantic ...
The President Who Doesn’t Read, Trump’s allergy to the written word and his reliance on oral communication have proven liabilities in office. (*archive link)
Ironically, it was the publication of a book this week that crystallized the reality of just how little Donald Trump reads. While, like many of the tendencies described in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, Trump’s indifference to the printed word has been apparent for some time, the depth and implications of Trump’s strong preference for oral communication over the written word demand closer examination. “He didn’t process information in any conventional sense,” Wolff writes. “He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate.” Wolff quotes economic adviser Gary Cohn writing in an email: “It’s worse than you can imagine … Trump won’t read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers, nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.” While Trump and his allies, as well as some mainstream journalists, have attacked the accuracy of Wolff’s book, Trump’s allergy to reading is among the most fully corroborated assertions Fire and Fury makes. Ahead of the election, the editors of this magazine wrote that the Republican candidate “appears not to read.” Before the inauguration, Trump told Axios, “I like bullets or I like as little as possible. I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page. That I can tell you.” In February, The New York Times reported that National Security Council members had been instructed to keep policy papers to a single page and include lots of graphics and maps. Mother Jones reviewed classified information indicating Trump’s briefings were a quarter as long as Barack Obama’s. In March, Reuters reported that briefers had strategically placed the president’s name in as many paragraphs of briefing documents as possible so as to attract his fickle attention. In September, the Associated Press reported that top aides had decided the president needed a crash course on America’s role in the world and arranged a 90-minute, map-and-chart-heavy lecture at the Pentagon. And amid the hype over Wolff’s book, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough wrote a column Friday saying that in September 2015, he confronted Trump over poor debate performances, saying, “Can you read?” Met with silence, Scarborough pressed again: “I’m serious, Donald. Do you read? If someone wrote you a one-page paper on a policy, could you read it?” Trump replied by brandishing a Bible from his mother and saying he read it all the time—probably a self-aware joke, given Trump’s proud impiety and displayed ignorance of the Bible.
And so on, and frequent readers of the pond will know where this is heading.
Who could love an illiterate, pig headed, deeply ignorant, narcissistic searcher for a peace prize by settling wars in his own fevered brain?
Why the pond is glad you asked, because Dame Slap could ...
Fear not kiddies, Dame Slap is going to give you a terrible bashing, but when it comes to the crunch, she'll happily don her MAGA cap for her King ...
Dame Slap just loved herself a man chronically incapable of reading ... and so it's time to press on, but relax, there'll be the odd bit of visual relief ...
Earlier this month, one of the top sellers on Nielsen BookScan’s nonfiction list of books in Australia was a colouring book for adults called Cosy Creepy. A few weeks later it slipped to No.11, just below the 10th biggest seller in Australia: another colouring book for adults. A popular colouring book, devoid of words, tells its own story. We’re living in a post-literate society. Reading books that demand our full concentration for a lengthy period has become a last-century pastime. The top 15 bestselling nonfiction books in early September featured psychology self-help book The Let Them Theory at No.1; a few puzzle books including Minute Cryptic; a design book; some books for dads (Father’s Day was around the corner); and a couple of recipe books for time-poor cooks. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these books. If people want to read a book to learn that they can’t control the behaviour of narcissists or others around them, then The Let Them Theory book is for them. Given it is a top seller, good luck to author Mel Robbins. But the source of Robbins’s fame is another insight into our post-literate society. Robbins seems to be a bigger hit on TikTok with her two-minute psycho-sessions than in bookstores. No judgment here – I watch dog videos sometimes, so whatever floats your boat. We are, however, at the start of a colossal transformation of human minds and human relationships. Fifteen years into the near universal use of smartphones, plenty has been written about the dangers of children – and young adults – spending a chunk of their daily lives online. Playing violent video games and falling down rabbit holes with strangers, where real connections are replaced with virtual ones, can’t be good for boys. Girls are inundated from a young age with scrolling images – hundreds a day – decreeing, without even saying so, what it takes to be beautiful, popular, hip, cool, loved. Those same girls, barely in their teens, are posing in selfies to impress “friends” that they are all or some of those things. You want your head read if you think that’s good for a girl’s wellbeing.
Ah, but we know what's good for a girl's wellbeing. King Donald peddles it all the time ...
Sorry, but it is a Sunday toon fest as well as a meditation ...
There is plenty of focus, too, on the effects on our political culture where adults inhale daily, hourly, the exhaust fumes of agreement on social media. This sustained practice of nodding along to people you agree with can’t be good for them, or for society. We’re losing brain muscle, along with the ability to see disagreement as healthy. Losing the ability to concentrate Behind all that online commotion and disorder is the dismal fact that doesn’t get much attention: fewer people – kids and adults – are reading books.
Hang on, concentration is all very well, but does it get you the loot? Does it prepare you for bag man duties?
Hey ho, on we go ...
A national reading survey in 2023 revealed that more than a quarter of Australians didn’t read a single book that year, with the numbers of non-readers even higher among young Australians. This reflects a global trend of younger generations reading fewer books. “Reading books, even for pleasure, can’t compete with TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. In 1976, about 40 per cent of high school seniors said they read at least six books for fun in the previous year, compared with 11 per cent who said they hadn’t read any. By 2022, those percentages flipped,” Rose Horowitch wrote in a 2024 piece in The Atlantic headed “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books”. ‘Losing yourself in a book is fundamentally different to tuning out on social media platforms.’ Horowitch’s interviews with 33 college professors late last year revealed a common tale: students saying they can’t concentrate on a book, ideas they don’t understand or even a sonnet. It’s also worth placing the popularity of colouring books for adults next to our sliding literacy rates. Australian Bureau of Statistics data reveals that about 44 per cent of adult Australians have low or very low literacy rates. The Grattan Institute’s The Reading Guarantee report last year called for urgent action to stem the rates of illiteracy among Australian school students. The authors called for schools to embrace phonics-based decoding skills when teaching kids to read. An OECD Survey of Adult Skills late last year found “a mixed global picture of literacy, numeracy and adaptive problem-solving proficiency”. Apart from Finland, Japan, The Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, where a large proportion of adults showed advanced abilities, “on average across OECD countries, 18 per cent of adults do not even have the most basic levels of proficiency in any of the domains”. Writing in the Financial Times, John Burn-Murdoch traces declining concentration spans in students to about 2010 – when the smartphone became ubiquitous for teenagers, even some pre-teens. Even if a child can avoid the mental health problems explored by Jonathan Haidt in The Anxious Generation, there is a longer-tail question about the effect of social media on our attention span. What if we aren’t just reading less, we are also thinking less?
Thinking less? Outrageous, why read when you can enjoy a bloody good movie?
Perhaps Dame Slap doesn't get the joke, perhaps she's movie-deprived ...
Too few people are asking what will become of our modern society if the brains of its citizens are being rewired daily by the commercial drivers of tech companies using algorithms to feed online addictions, fuelling fast-paced scrolling habits, holding us like hostages, away from long-form reading. In his weekly Cultural Capital newsletter, The Times columnist James Marriott has written a series of important pieces about “the dawn of the post-literate society”. Last week he compared the “reading revolution” that started in the mid-18th century to the mass dependence on smartphones that kicked in just over a decade ago. In the mid-18th century, people started to read like never before. Modern societies have benefited from “the greatest transfer of knowledge into the hands of ordinary men and women in history”, Marriott writes. The world of print is orderly, logical, rational, he notes, quoting media theorist Neil Postman: “To engage with the written word means following a line of thought, which requires considerable powers of classification, inference making and reasoning.” Postman said it was no coincidence that some of our greatest achievements happened when people started to read: the birth of capitalism, the rise of reason over superstition, scientific developments, democratic traditions taking hold, and so on. “If the reading revolution represented the greatest transfer of knowledge to ordinary men and women in history, the screen revolution represents the greatest theft of knowledge from ordinary people in history,” Marriott wrote, pointing to surveys of Gen Zers spending nine hours a day staring at a screen, much of it “a diet of pointless notifications, inane short-videos and social media rage bait”. Michael Parker agrees that we are only just coming to grips with the consequences of people, especially teenagers, reading fewer books than previous generations. Parker is the headmaster of Newington College, one of Sydney’s highly regarded private schools. In a new book out this week called Thinking for Yourself, Parker and Fiona Morrison offer a counterweight to the online forces that discourage thinking, not just among young people. The keys to critical thinking
Morrison, Parker’s wife, is an associate professor in English at the University of NSW. Their extensive experience teaching students led them to write this book. Thinking for Yourself is part of a David and Goliath battle for the minds of the next generation. Tech companies want kids to stay on smartphones. Unlike earlier technological developments such as the TV, the smartphone is with you all the time. Like a gateway drug, the smartphone is rewiring a kid’s brain towards craving more and more hours scrolling, living on a screen. Parker and Morrison’s book encourages us to pause, to concentrate longer, to read more books, to think more critically. People thinking well is, they say, a prerequisite for a healthy democracy. Speaking to Inquirer last week, Parker points to a shelf behind him jammed with dense textbooks about critical thinking. These books won’t get much traction among students, let alone adults. Thinking for Yourself is a short manual for adults wanting to make better decisions about everything from buying a home to resolving workplace conundrums. For students, it’s a guide on how to argue well, convincingly, thoughtfully, free of emotion – skills swamped by the tsunami of social media
The key to critical thinking? King Donald's got that one covered...
Drew Hutton must have been part of that research team...
Eventually the reptiles did interrupt the rant with a snap, which, with great respect, was exceedingly dull ... Head master of Newington College, Michael Parker. His book is part of a David and Goliath battle for the minds of the next generation. Picture: Supplied
Dame Slap continued to have an anxiety attack about vulgar youff, reminding the pond of the days when Carl Barks was snatched out of hand as a waste of time, and never mind the joys of square eggs ...
Sorry, do go on ...
The human brain contains about 86 billion neurons, each capable of forming connections with other neurons to create more than one trillion connections. Though the number of neurons doesn’t change, the connections – or synapses – do. Some neuroscientists have a shorthand for it: “What fires together, wires together.” What happens when kids stop reading books Dementia specialists talk about people maintaining cognitive health to help ward off diseases such as dementia. What about the cognitive health of kids? Parker is concerned the content and fast-paced instant gratification of social media, with algorithms directing kids into echo chambers of agreement, is literally changing the cognitive pathways in a child’s brain. “Doomscrolling”, he says, whether on TikTok or Instagram or other social media platforms “makes Australia’s Funniest Home Videos look like Tolstoy by comparison”. Losing yourself in a book is fundamentally different to tuning out on social media platforms, he says. “Fiction enlarges your humanity by having you understand others. Nonfiction, whether it’s biography or just the proposition of an argument, of a field that allows you to see all around it, requires a student to sit patiently and concentrate. I’m worried that form of concentration, like a muscle, is lessening. I talk to kids in English classes and in year 12 interviews. Child after child tells me they’re struggling with the concentration of sitting there, reading whole books or doing an exam for them,” says Parker, who was an English teacher before rising to senior roles at Cranbrook School, Oxley College and now Newington, His observations are so commonplace, they risk being blindly accepted as the new normal. The question is whether the new normal is good for students, and for the world they will inherit. Morrison, who teaches second and third-year honours students, says students are interpreting a mass of material every day, in forms different to previous generations. “They’re reading in complex ways all the time, but it is a little bit harder these days to say: See this long novel, it’s going to be OK to down tools on all that busy-ness and work with me slowly, deliberatively, in detail, through this long thing. Once they go with me, it is OK, but it’s just not their habit,” she says. Feelings over logic and reason Morrison has noticed students are resorting more and more to their feelings when forming arguments. “Somehow we’re in a strange place with intensity of feeling replacing fact.”
Here the pond must interrupt to reassure the younglings.
Don't worry vulgar youffs.
Feelings are just fine. Trust King Donald, Dame Slap's preferred President? Sure can ...
“I always had very strong feelings about autism,” Mr. Trump began on Monday, saying he had been waiting for such an event for 20 years. Later, Mr. Trump proclaimed: “I’ve stopped seven different wars. I’ve saved millions of lives. I’ve done a lot of things. This will be as important as any single thing I’ve done.”
You see kids? No need to worry about feelings as a substitute for arguments, thinking or the need for the scientific examination of things. You can have strong feelings about vaccines or Comey or Vlad the Sociopath, and everything will turn out fine. All good.
Don't listen to Dame Slap's nonsense, just go with the man she celebrated with a cap-donning, and you'll end up as scientific as he is, and without any need to read at all ...
President of the USA ma, and no reading or science required ...
Indeed, no need for peer reviews, research, clinical trials, data, just go with your Dame Slap-approved King and his feelings ...
Parker agrees. “It’s OK to have feelings, but for feelings to substitute for argument, a thinking argument, is just a short-cut way to not having to examine anything.” When feelings take centre stage, it’s easy for students to say that an argument makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, says Parker. And that constrains people listening to different opinions as well. He is a firm believer that critical thinking will, and should, require people to confront arguments and conclusions that may make a person feel profoundly discombobulated or upset. “That’s part of building up the cognitive architecture so that you can be thinking, and be thinking well, thinking responsibly as a citizen, as somebody in a workplace, somebody who’s got responsibilities to other people and making decisions,” says Parker.
Hang on, hang on, no need for cognition when you spot the enemy ...
Frankly the only good thing to be done with a book is to ban it, and while we're at it, ban those bloody comedians too ...
By this point Dame Slap was winding down, and the excuses for running a 'toon were also getting every thin, so best wrap up proceedings for those who did the reading between the 'toons ...
Compare this with our own schooling. As students we weren’t encouraged by concerned teachers to confront arguments that might have upset us. Instead, it was an intuitive part of our daily education. Jane Curry is responsible for publishing Thinking for Yourself. The founder and managing director of the independent Ventura Press is also seeing our concentration spans change. “We publishers are competing for people’s time and attention, and when you are up against Netflix, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, that is a very tough battle,” she tells Inquirer. “Reading is a solitary, immersive experience, which is the very opposite of a digital dopamine hit. We find if people are in the reading habit, then they are hooked. But overall reading habits are declining and that is a challenge.” Audio books: why reading and listening are different Curry says not everything digital is a threat: “The BookTok trend has brought in a younger generation of ‘romantasy’ fans, who read authors such as Sarah J. Maas, which is keeping us all in business.” People also are listening to audio books, Curry says, with enormous growth through Spotify, Apple and Audible. Still, when you’re reading a book, as opposed to listening to an audio book, you can’t drive a car, do some admin or colour in. Reading and being bored are different, but not entirely so. If being bored has become unnatural, as university professors are witnessing among their students, it’s little wonder that reading is a chore rather than a joy for them. This solitary pastime that demands our undivided attention has wired hundreds of millions of human brains in a certain way over almost 300 years, producing many of modernity’s finest achievements. If we are indeed at the dawn of a post-literate society, the impacts of social media, smartphones and screens are barely nascent. That ought to make us think – while we still can.
Nah, if thinking involves lining up to don a MAGA cap for the Don, count the pond out.
The pond has spent an inordinate amount of time watching movies and television, once celebrated as the ruination of youth, and ditto listened to endless amounts of radio, once upon a time the ruination of youth, and read a lot of comics and wasted inordinate amounts of time on sci fi, all certain to ruin impressionable young minds.
First a little social media. Relax, younglings, you don't have to read about Dame Slap's king's inclination to fascism, you can just see it and hear it ...
The bromancer is generally nauseating when he gets into his evangelical proselytising phase but this was an especially nauseating effort and the pond wanted to keep down its breakfast.
Quoting Tucker Carlson? Sure thing. Absolve Kirk of his deep-seated misogyny and abuse of sundry minorities and a bucket load of hateful positions? Easy peasy.
Ditto grating Gemma ... all yours ...
Difficult road to forgiveness begins with one choice Of all the things Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika could speak of in that moment of sharing her devastating loss before the eyes of the world, she chose three words. By Gemma Tognini Columnist
The pond realises garrulous Gemma has a cult following among pond correspondents, but they can indulge in private, with no need for the pond to join them ...
She proposes forgiveness but what the reptiles at the lizard Oz do is generally unforgivable.
And the pond has never been a big devotee of Jennings of the fifth form, this time offering advice on the basis that he's some kind of King Donald whisperer ...
Albanese-Trump meeting: Go in positive or don’t go If the PM wants to avoid being berated in the Oval Office about how little Australia spends on defence, he should go to Washington with a list of proposals to expand alliance co-operation. by Peter Jennings Contributor
At least the pond has a 'toon for that one, courtesy Moir ...
Trot out blather about how your well-equipped to join King Donald on foreign adventures? And that'll sort things out and smooth things over?
Tug the forelock and be ever so 'umble is the solution?
And so on, and if King Chuck isn't the answer, then maybe there's no answer at all.
And speaking of King Donald affiliates and fellow thinkers and fellow travellers, that's how the pond, by this winnowing and a threshing, ended up with a bog standard bout of Ughmann climate science denialism for its weekend dose of reptile pleasures.
Sure it's dull and predictable, but by dint of repetition, the pond has become impervious ...
The header: Grim fear campaign risks climate of distrust, The Albanese government’s risk assessment report is a masterclass in distorting information to strike terror into the hearts of the population.
The caption diligently explaining how it's the mentions that are a problem, and if we all just looked away, there wouldn't be a problem: The explosion of extreme weather mentions fans fear in the politics of climate.
The Ughmann is clearly running out of angles, because that's the only way to explain this way into his standard repertoire:
If you were old enough to watch television in 1987 you will remember the Grim Reaper AIDS advertisement. It ranks as the most memorable, most successful and maybe most dishonest Australian government ad ever screened. It begins with an ominous fog on an empty screen. The silence is broken by a metallic clash that echoes like the hammers of hell, followed by a satanic growl from the blackened teeth in the skull of the Grim Reaper. His empty eye sockets framed by his sackcloth cowl stare down the length of a demonic bowling alley. At the other end, 10 people are lowered through the mist to stand rigid like bowling pins as a foreboding male voice intones: “At first, only gays and IV drug users were being killed by AIDS.”
The reptiles, desperate to help out, and keen to show how agile they are with social media, provided a link to the ad on YouTube ...
You could look it up if you like, or you could just keep on with the Ughmann's attempt at a metaphorical flourish ...
The camera then picks out the face of a little girl weeping in the front rank of the doomed as the Reaper bowls a giant ball. “But now we know every one of us could be devastated by it.” The little girl turns her head an instant before she and the others are skittled. Their corpses lie in the mist as the voice continues: “The fact is, over 50,000 men, women and children now carry the AIDS virus.” More people are lowered as the Reaper selects another ball. This time a mother cradling a baby is highlighted in the firing line. “In three years nearly 2,000 of us will be dead.” Nine fall as the ball strikes and the mother and child are left standing amid corpses as the Reaper reaches for a ball to pick up the spare. “That if not stopped, it could kill more Australians than World War II.” The last ball mows down the mother as her child spins in the air and the Reaper screams in chill triumph like the Nazgul in The Lord of the Rings.
Then came another cheap and tawdry attempt to drag in an irrelevance, in a way that even our Henry wouldn't have attempted, Hollywood actor Rock Hudson in his prime and after he disclosed that he had AIDS.
The pond doesn't have to wander back in time for its metaphors. Sadly there are new realities afoot, as noted in the Graudian:
A 30°C shift?!
But the Ughmann was determined to futtock on ...
Those who remember the 1980s will recall the fear caused by the spread of AIDS. It came into sharp focus for me in 1985 when it killed Hollywood leading man Rock Hudson. Then some of my friends died. So nothing that follows should be read as an argument that Australia should not have acted to curtail the spread of the disease or that anyone’s sexual orientation reduces the value of their life. But there is no doubt that when the ad was released those behind it knew the disease mostly affected men who had anal sex and injecting drug users. In 1987, the actual number of diagnosed HIV cases in Australia was in the low thousands and the frightening figures in the script were fanciful. The rationale behind the campaign was understandable. The federal health minister at the time, Neal Blewett, and his senior adviser, Bill Bowtell, feared the community would not be moved if it believed the only groups at real risk were gay men and drug users. The idea was to universalise the threat to control the politics of the response and deliver the funding they needed for the fight. Fear is a great motivator and the campaign was a thumping success. Its defenders would point to Australia’s internationally low infection rate as proof of concept, and they may well be right. Success spawned many other campaigns that leaned on the same strategy. That does not change the fact this ad was deliberate government disinformation. The excuse is it was lying for a greater public good. The idea of the noble lie traces its roots all the way back to Plato’s Republic, where he argues rulers may propagate a myth or falsehood for the sake of social harmony or to protect the state. The problem with lying is it’s a bad habit no matter how good the cause, and fear campaigns create imaginary monsters that can be difficult to control.
At this point the reptiles introduced an AV distraction, Foreign Minister Penny Wong is rebutting US President Donald Trump's claim that climate change is a “con job”. Speaking with Sky News, the Foreign Minister says Australia should be pragmatic in its approach to climate change, despite differing opinions from the US President. She believes some Pacific nations are already experiencing the impacts of global warming. Penny Wong also welcomes the news of a meeting between Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump, scheduled for October 20.
At last the Ughmann got around to his real point, a standard exercise in reptile denialism:
There is no bigger fear campaign in human history than global warming. Many would argue there is every reason to be terrified. I can’t recall what The Guardian’s index reads at the moment but I think it is dialled up to emergency and every claim of catastrophe from any quarter is met with unquestioning assent. This column’s position is that climate change is a problem but not an existential threat. Rich countries will manage adaptation better than poor ones, and adaptation is where this lands because global emissions keep rising. The world is not serious about net zero so over-investing in mitigation is a mug’s game if many are cheating. Clearly, the Albanese government honestly believes global warming is a real and present danger that demands a radical overhaul of our energy systems. It’s also clear that the raft of documents it released to support its 2035 emissions reductions targets are littered with deliberate sins of omission and commission, all made in the noble cause of stoking alarm to save the planet. Its risk assessment report is a masterclass in distorting information to strike terror into the hearts of the population. And the government and its agencies are just the tip of an industrial-scale network of publicly and privately funded advocates, and a long vapour trail of activists all busily stoking the furnaces of fear.
The reptiles offered another distraction, Anthony Albanese has been dragged into a global climate change fight after Chinese and US presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump clashed over emission reductions and renewables amid a deepening strategic and military contest between the superpowers.
The Ughmann blathered on in his seminarian way:
Much of the education system has spent the better part of this century ensuring kiddies develop a healthy dose of climate anxiety. It has been so successful that some say they don’t want to bring children on to this burning platform of a planet. So, congratulations one and all, you have bequeathed to your children the paralysis of despair. There is one other big problem with the permanent climate horror show: the wind and solar-dependent electricity system the government is bent on building can’t work without gas. It will cost billions and barely function with bucketloads of gas. But thanks to the yeoman spadework of the Greens, the teals, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen and Labor’s Environment Action Network, many see gas as Satan’s syrup. Never forget, Bowen told the COP28 climate change jamboree: “We need to end the use of fossil fuels in our energy systems. We can’t compromise on the science or the need to act. Words can be flexible, but we need outcomes. Fossil fuels have no ongoing role to play in our energy system. And I say this as the Climate and Energy Minister as one of the largest fossil fuel exporters in the world.”
For no particular reason, the reptiles also dragged Danica in to help the Ughmann: Sky News host Danica De Giorgio discusses Energy Minister Chris Bowen labelling people “cranks and crackpots” for disagreeing with the government’s climate change agenda. “Energy Minister Chris Bowen, well, he is going to be joining the prime minister in New York to announce Australia’s 2035 emissions reduction target to the world,” Ms De Giorgio said. “Before jetting off he went on the ABC and then repeated Jim Chalmers’ charge those who disagree with the government’s climate change catastrophism are cranks and crackpots.”
...The report’s conclusions, while hypothetical, were emblematic of why private investors have poured tens of billions of private investment into renewable projects over the past five to six years, the authors said. Forecasts that power price would fall thanks to the take-up of renewables – most notably Anthony Albanese’s ill-fated prediction before the 2022 election that electricity bills would be $275 lower – have proved wrong and helped fuel claims that a simple fix to higher prices was a return to fossil fuel energy. “It is worth noting that when the various governments (NSW, Victoria, Queensland, Commonwealth) from both sides of the political divide made policy announcements suggesting renewables would be cheaper,” the authors said. Those predictions were reasonable at the time, but “the world has changed significantly since then”. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine plunged global energy markets into turmoil, sparking a spike in power prices here and around the world. Covid disrupted global supply chains and the cost of building also soared. “Nevertheless, the current trajectory is proving cheaper than the counterfactual,” the authors said. “This should come as no surprise. If there was a lower cost way, markets and investors would find it.”
Then the pond stood aside so the Ughmann could have a final emission:
Bowen’s career is testimony to his belief that words are flexible but, alas, ordinary people believe words mean something. The government turned those words into legislated emissions cuts. Now it must find a way to walk those words back across ground it has already salted. So it was refreshing to hear from two Labor premiers this week who, unlike anyone in the federal government, speak clearly and actually have to run electricity systems. South Australia’s Peter Malinauskas and NSW’s Chris Minns are signed up to decarbonisation but both highlight the centrality of gas in underpinning that project. Both also admit that more wind and solar do not add up to cheaper electricity, as everyone’s electricity bill proves. The only thing that will bring down bills is access to abundant, cheap gas, and the only road to that is increasing supply. My mother liked to say, “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.” It was a way of reminding her children that lies have a life of their own and keeping your story straight in a tangle of deceit is hard. In government, lies don’t just risk tripping up the liar; they corrode trust in every institution that repeats them. Once people learn they’ve been misled, they don’t forget and they don’t forgive. Trust, once squandered, is rarely restored. It’s like a disease.
Actually it's like attempting a response to a scientifically observable set of events and trajectories, but never mind, the pond almost immediately began to wonder about a bonus, having exhausted for the moment all the reptiles on the extreme far right.
Even better the reptiles reckoned it was a ten minute read, thereby ensuring readers would be primed for a weekend nap:
The header: Conservatives in disruption as Libs grapple with global tides, The apocalyptic language of Donald Trump – American in its quasi-religious tone – excites much of the Coalition base in Australia. But here’s a reminder: we are not America.
The caption for the wretched collage, for which unwisely Frank decided to take a credit when he'd have been better off blaming AI: Donald Trump's UN speech has ignited a Liberal Party 'civil war' in Australia. Artwork: Frank Ling
This "Ned" Everest was a challenging climb, with many levels of technical skill required to make it to the top:
Conservatism in Australia is engulfed in disruption, chaos and upheaval. It is riven by intellectual division, populist assertion and Trumpian delusion with many of its politicians running personal crusades that further demoralise a Liberal Party struggling for self-preservation. The May 2025 election wipe-out has unleashed a torrent of experimental vibes from a conservative minority seeking a historical reinvention of the party, demanding a shift to the ideological right with an attack on so-called mass immigration, net zero at 2050 and sharpening cultural battles with Labor. The Trumpian overtones are everywhere. In his breakouts, frontbencher Andrew Hastie repeatedly uses the enshrining slogan “putting Australians first” – selling the idea that Albanese Labor is betraying the people, from climate change to immigration to industry policy. Donald Trump’s speech this week to the UN General Assembly – pitched as a clarion call to radical conservatives across the Western democracies – will inspire the Coalition right wing at home to more assertive demands. This was Trump in his most devastating guise as global prophet seeking to spread his revolution to other countries.
Tony Abbott told Inquirer: “It’s an electrifying speech that Donald Trump has just made. It should reverberate around the world. He’s right that misguided climate policies and scarcely controlled mass migration are grave threats to the survival of the West.”
Say what? This is what the pond heard ...
Meanwhile, "Ned" was in onion muncher hell ...
It is the apocalyptic language of Trump – American in its quasi-religious tone – that excites much of the Coalition base in Australia. Hastie now warns that unless the Liberals get their act together they will “be potentially in further decline and perhaps one day extinct”. He stages a conservative breakout driven by the view the Liberals are approaching a “reform or die” existential event. This excites and delights the pro-conservative media, anxious to play its role in the liquidation of the moderate Sussan Ley as leader. One conservative told Inquirer the party’s future depended on installing a conservative leader before the next election. The obvious candidates are Angus Taylor or Hastie, in a party riven by leadership and factional rivalry. In a fatalistic move, Hastie has crossed the Rubicon. Despite professing support for Ley, he is undermining her. He believes the core ideas of the Trumpian revolution – sovereignty, family, strong borders, energy security and cultural cohesion – provide a foundation for mobilisation by the Liberals and growing acceptance by the Australian public.
The reptiles then flung inn a huge snap of the pastie Hastie attempting to prove he was a heavy metal grunt and boofhead, Andrew Hastie demands Australia ‘make things’ and criticises previous Liberal policy on the car industry, in a video released on social media. Picture: Instagram
The pond decided to fling a little more money on the lettuce ...
"Ned"was agitated by that torque talker sighting ...
The central issue for the Liberals now is whether the party’s centre can hold and the conservative revolution – decisively divorced from the Australian middle ground – can be contained or accommodated by Ley on acceptable terms. The future of the Liberal Party now depends on this calculation. Ley is vulnerable but fighting; witness her tough-minded economic speech a fortnight ago that should have been a uniting event, calling for fiscal responsibility, rejecting big government and empowering the individual – yet it sank without trace. The lesson: the pro-conservative media won’t credit Ley and will promote her removal. Most of the conservatives are obsessed about ideology but weak on policy. Hastie’s faith in state power, market scepticism, nostalgia for the car industry and hostility towards emissions reductions represent the policies repudiated and buried by the Liberal Party during the Abbott government 2013-15 under Abbott, Joe Hockey and Mathias Cormann. That’s how crazy is the current Liberal chaos and intellectual confusion. Hastie’s breakout has raised severe doubts about his judgment and his policy ideas, and has left wide sections of the party puzzled and angry. The tensions will only intensify when people realise that Hastie is serious and prepared to contest the leadership this term if the politics break his way. He believes the West is in a profound civilisational crisis. He wants the Liberal Party to acknowledge this reality and be ready to act on it. Hastie has been influenced by the book Covenant written by Danny Kruger, the British Conservative MP who has just defected to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party declaring the Tories have become a “roadblock to conservatism”. Kruger says of the impending crisis: “But our culture has never before adopted the critique of itself as its governing philosophy. It is difficult to imagine how civilisation that essentially repudiates itself can possibly survive.”
Andrew Hastie is the Liberal candidate for the WA seat of Canning in the byelection to be held in just over a week. He is 32 and a former SAS captain who was deployed several times to Afghanistan. Last week it came out that Hastie’s father, Peter, a pastor and theologian, has written against evolution for a publication that believes the world was created by God some 6000 years ago. When asked whether he shared his father’s views, Hastie declared that questions about his family were “totally unacceptable” and “completely irrelevant to this campaign”. The issue came up again today, when Hastie was asked whether he personally believed in creationism. He refused, repeatedly, to answer directly, though he said there was “plenty of disagreement within Christianity itself about the specifics of creation, of theistic evolution”. His views weren’t important, he argued, because “There’s no religious test in this country for public office.” Are Hastie’s personal views here important? There’s a fair argument that they are.... ...if Hastie does believe that the Earth was created 6000 years ago, he’s entitled to his belief. But the voters of Canning are likewise entitled to know about it, because it’s a belief that many of them may find a bit troubling. It’s not like simply believing that a God exists, or that some behaviours are good and others bad: it’s about material facts, which are what we hope we can all agree on, and it goes against reason and evidence and popular consensus. What’s more, it’s the kind of belief that could have strange consequences. How does it fit with the rest of the world? How would it affect Hastie’s views of the Indigenous people who have lived in Australia for 40,000 years or more? What would he make of geological evidence about climate change? Religious freedom is vitally important, but it’s not a shield against uncomfortable questions.
Well yes, as soon as you start blathering in a fundamentalist way, He believes the West is in a profound civilisational crisis, and bringing in Nige, there's a problem: Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage smiles alongside newly appointed Reform UK MP Danny Kruger, right, during a press conference, in London. Picture: AFP
Boofheads 'r us.
We've endured the onion muncher, the last thing we need is another bible basher ...
The ultimate issue is belief: what does the Liberal Party stand for in 2025? Ley must answer this question and fast. Waiting for policy reviews won’t work. She doesn’t have much time. Hastie is set on providing an answer. Our conservatives are influenced by the global movement. Two defining speeches came this week from Trump at the UN and Abbott himself at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Brisbane. Abbott revealed the depth of alarm about the party’s future. Speaking to an audience of conservative believers, Abbott apologised for past Liberal failures and delivered a desperate, almost panicked, plea – “give us one last chance to prove ourselves worthy of your trust” – his delivery interrupted with audience cheers of “Pauline Hanson” and “One Nation”. The Liberals are reduced to begging for far-right redemption.
Dear sweet long forgotten onion muncher follies, Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott delivered a desperate, almost panicked, plea during his speech at the opening of the 2025 QPAC Australia Conference in Brisbane. Picture: NewsWire/Glenn Campbell
"Ned"struggled on as best he could ...
This is the electoral lever the conservatives will deploy: unless the party goes decisively to the right, the voters will shift decisively to Hanson. Hanson is running ferociously against net zero at 2050, waiting to hoover up these votes. Hastie’s pitch is that the world has changed, so the Liberals must change – this, he says, is the world of Xi Jinping and Trump. That’s true. But while Trump exploits genuine flaws in progressive policies, Australia must beware: Trump is an isolationist in his mad assaults on climate change and renewables while his attacks on immigration as a threat to national civilisation are excessive in any Australian context. Here is a reminder: Australia is not America. Trump usually turns a valid point into an invalid policy prescription. His politics don’t work in Australia, not now, not ever. Peter Dutton learnt this at the last election, yet many conservatives want a re-run, blind to the character of their own country. As Abbott suggests, Trump presents as a saviour of the nation-state and of Western civilisation. Progressives loathe Trump but seem incapable of grasping his enduring appeal against everything they represent. Warning the democratic world, Trump said: “The carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions and they’re heading down a path of total destruction. Climate change, it’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion. All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong – if you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.” He had a White House rule: never use the word coal, only use “clean, beautiful coal”. On mass migration Trump told UN leaders: “It’s destroying your country and you have to do something about it – the No.1 political issue of our time, the crisis of uncontrolled migration. Your countries are being ruined.”
Then it was on to an AV distraction featuring the King in full rant mode ... President Donald Trump delivered a fiery address at the United Nations in New York, lashing out at the organisation’s global agenda and accusing it of spreading “alarmist” climate rhetoric. In a defiant hour-long speech, he dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job” ever perpetrated, condemned uncontrolled migration, and declared that America would chart its own path on the world stage. Breaking from diplomatic convention, President Trump attacked both the UN and his political rivals, underscoring his nationalist vision and rejection of multilateralism.
What a weird thumb, and yet it conjures up the essence of the madness ...distilled essence of loondom, and yet not a word from "Ned" about the vast UN conspiracy designed to undermine the impact of his ranting...
"Ned" discreetly ignored all that... and turned to petulant Peta for answers, but if she's the answer, then there's no point to the question ...
Much, but not all of this, refers to illegal entry, an issue contained in Australia. But Trump delivered a powerful addition: “Proud nations must be allowed to protect their communities and prevent their societies from being overwhelmed by people they have never seen before with different customs, religions, with different everything.” Peta Credlin, who speaks directly to the conservative rank and file, said in this paper: “Trump’s speech wasn’t so much as a salvo as it was a bunker-busting bomb at the very epicentre of a global governance structure that is crippling Western civilisation.”
Credlin called it a “direct repudiation” of the two ideas that dominate the West – the climate change destruction of national energy sovereignty and barely controlled mass migration – ideas that much of the Liberal Party and the British Conservative Party have long accepted. These are the new battle lines pointing to a conservative revolution. But a revolution going where?
Well might "Ned" ask in his rhetorical way, but the reptiles didn't have an answer, they just had more petulant Peta, Sky News host Peta Credlin discusses US President Donald Trump’s speech at the United Nations overnight. “In a truth bomb designed to burst open the bunker of global bureaucracy and control that is the UN headquarters in New York, Donald Trump’s speech last night didn’t miss,” Ms Credlin said. “It was a powerful speech designed to not only kill a few woke sacred cows but also to eat them in one of his famous burgers as well. “He’s clearly decided that he’s not going to die wondering whether he could’ve made a difference second time around in the White House.”
Meanwhile, King Donald's monster mouth might subvert his fascist attempt to use the Justice Department to lock up his foes ...
What's the chances that Comey now regrets helping out King Donald with Hillary's emails?
Never mind, back to "Ned" and the schismatics busy at their schisms...
The Liberals need a mainstream anchor that accepts the reality of decarbonisation, the need for effective but more limited immigration and an economic policy that rejects pervasive state power and renews individual enterprise. Ley’s task is daunting and perhaps it is beyond her. It is to hold the Liberals together, beat back the extremes of the conservative revolution, but still find a way to channel this conservative momentum. The party is vulnerable in urban centres, once its heartland, and unless it appeals to these voters then the fears of marginalisation will be realised. The mistake the conservatives keep making is their Trumpian insistence that the Liberals must seek maximum differentiation from Labor. Their real task, on the contrary, is to understand and reflect the Australian mainstream in its many different manifestations. Conservative echo chambers are the great distraction. In his interview with this paper done from Washington in mid-September, Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan, in charge of the energy and net zero review, offered a decisive pointer to the resolution of this internal party crisis. It seems to run as follows: nuclear is the key, in the US micro-reactors off an assembly line are now being planned to power data centres for AI, funded by huge private capital injections, with the Australian government able to take a supervisory golden share in operations. It’s a new dynamic. The old Dutton nuclear plan goes. There are no government-constructed nuclear plants at old coal sites. There is no huge call on the public budget. The aim is to destroy any Labor scare campaign on public cost, as seen at the last election, while selling the idea that net zero can be achieved only with nuclear and that it will be cheaper than Labor’s model. In America the AI revolution, with its massive demand for energy, is already being tied into huge private investment in micro-reactors. The plan is to roll out asap independent costings of Labor’s model and, down the track, the Coalition’s nuclear-oriented model. This reflects two essential strategic conclusions – that the Coalition must walk down the decarbonisation path and that it must devise a superior net-zero model to Labor. The plan is to give the Coalition a policy window to the future, not the past. Ley has already said the Coalition will not legislate for net zero. Decoded, it will not mandate net zero. This provides flexibility to facilitate an internal political settlement. The hard line conservatives won’t buy this settlement. Hastie has been unwise enough to paint himself into a corner saying that unless net zero is rejected he goes to the backbench. Yet Ley cannot repudiate net zero, nor should a rational Liberal partyroom.
Cue a snap of persecuted Susssan, Sussan Ley’s task is to hold the Liberals together, beat back the extremes of the conservative revolution, but still find a way to channel this conservative momentum — perhaps it’s beyond her. Picture: NewsWire / Josie Hayden
"Ned" really began to wear on the pond by finding even more time for onion munching ...
It is disappointing that Abbott in his CPAC speech has reversed his position and called on the Coalition to drop the Morrison government policy of net zero at 2050, since just a few weeks ago he dismissed the debate, telling the author it was best to avoid theological issues. Now he hasn’t. He told the conservative audience of net zero: “We have got to be against it.” Abbott wants the Liberals to stage yet another political war over climate change, saying they prevailed with this tactic at the 2010, 2013 and 2019 elections. Beyond this Abbott offered a civilisational pitch for a new aggressive conservatism: “Our society is fragmenting. We have three flags, not one. Some 80 Labor-Green councils are refusing to hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day. We have too many migrants and too many of them are living in Hotel Australia rather than joining Team Australia. And yet you can hardly blame them when we have a left establishment which is embarrassed about our Anglo-Celtic core culture and does not like our Judaeo-Christian ethos – even though it’s these things that have made us great.”
Oh for FFS, not the Anglo-Celtic core culture, and the Judaeo-Xian ethos in the one sentence!
It was too much, peak prize maroon, and needing a cracking Crace to really sent it up.
I was compounded by the reptiles flinging in even more onion munching ... Former prime minister Tony Abbott has labelled the Albanese government's climate targets a political death warrant. The former PM is calling on the Liberals to drop support for net zero as the Coalition continues to stay divided over the issue. Speaking at CPAC Australia, Mr Abbott was pessimistic about Labor's climate target and warned of the potential consequences of chasing it. Mr Abbott claims the government is 'pedalling a false environmental apocalypse' and questioned the reliability of renewable energy.
The pond doesn't usually like matching fervent cartoons, but sometimes it's better to be out and proud ...
On and on "Ned" blathered about the onion muncher and the pastie Hastie ...
Abbott is broadly allied with Hastie but certainly not on board with everything Hastie says. That’s understandable given the pitches Hastie has made. On energy, Hastie, in an astonishing line, says he wants a price target. Taken at face value that can only mean replacing an emissions target and rejecting the Paris Agreement framework of emissions reduction targets. The emissions reduction targets approved by the Abbott government in 2015 ran through the Turnbull and Morrison governments. Hastie’s critique of former Labor and Liberal governments, claiming they “let us down in the past by letting the car industry disappear”, is equally astonishing and untenable. Having the courage to end subsidies to an uncompetitive car industry is one of Abbott’s proudest economic achievements as prime minister. His famous line about the car companies was: “I said we were not going to chase them down the street waving a cheque book at them.” Governments these days have a strategic role to play in industry policy. But Hastie’s limited ventures into policy by backing energy price targets and lamenting the loss of uncompetitive, government-subsidised industry, raise alarming signals about a retreat to the failed policies of the 1970s. Ley, backed by her key shadow economic ministers, Ted O’Brien in Treasury and James Paterson in finance, needs to get on the front foot, repudiate false ideas and keep articulating the economic principles that will guide the Liberal Party. While Hastie is rapidly becoming the darling of the pro-conservative media, his ideas loom as throwbacks to the past, not beacons to the future. Hastie has spent 10 years preparing for his breakout: a decade as a backbencher, never a minister in the previous Coalition government and a term in what he felt was an opposition straitjacket imposed by Dutton. On display now are his ideological resolution, leadership ambition and political inexperience. The conservative spearheads, Hastie and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price are remarkable political assets to be mobilised for the Liberal Party. The question is whether their visions for the party can be accommodated within a relatively united centre-right Liberal Party.
But the reptiles insisted, flinging in a snap of The Price is Wrong, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, along with Hastie, are remarkable political assets to be mobilised for the Liberal Party. Picture: NewsWire/ Glenn Campbell
If that sort of flag-waving is an asset, is there a way to write it off?
It looked remarkably dumb to the pond, but what would the pond know?
And that at long last put an end to this "Ned" climb...
It’s true we now live in an age of populist politics and that’s a new ball game – witness the US and the Britain today – but there is no escaping the need to fashion policies that actually work and advance the country, not just represent a justified cultural attack on the centre-left. Reflecting the orthodoxy, former Howard chief of staff and Liberal minister Arthur Sinodinos, alarmed at the disunity, had a crack on the ABC this week about the conservatives and the need for rational politics, saying: “What all these people should be doing on the frontbench, on the backbench of the Liberal Party, is putting their heads down and getting on with coming up with specific policies and keeping the government to account.” What prospect of this? Abbott is both a romantic and a brutal realist. In his interview with Inquirer this week, he highlighted the dilemma facing conservatives who are enthralled by Trump but recognise that he cannot be easily translated into Australia. Abbott said: “MAGA plays well in the American heartland, but it won’t translate to Australia. Each country is going to have to find its own way to deal with these issues, given our different circumstances and different institutional cultures.”
How discreet, how apparently aware that King Donald might not be for everyone, and yet nary a word about King Donald's latest thrust.
