For the first time in its inglorious history, The Bug‘s Media Glass House Arse-Licker of the Month award has gone, not to just one scribe, but almost the entire MSM politics reporting cohort.

That’s right! For the month of August, our judges were astounded at just how many of those “journalists” relentlessly pressed the concept that it would be absolutely disgraceful of the Albanese government to even think of looking in the rear-vision mirror! No, it had to look only ahead! Get on with governing – if it’s capable of doing that! Looking back on the past nine years of the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison governments would be shameless, money-wasting witchhunts that would serve no good purpose!

It’s amazing how one little democratic voting exercise in May can change the collective mindset of all these scribes, isn’t it?

Those three LNP governments could bang away relentlessly over Labor’s debt and deficit disaster with the MSM’s almost universal support yet at the end of those nine years, Labor’s “debt and deficit disaster” looked like a tiny pimple on a bum compared with the prolapsed and suppurating rectum that was the LNP’s financial legacy.

The MSM for all those years was quite happy to see the Abbott government spend hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on royal commissions into pink batts (Rudd cleared); some financial dealings of Julia Gillard with a boyfriend 20 years ago (cleared) and Bill Shorten’s union career (no criminal activity uncovered) and the MSM had no problem with all of that whatsoever.

The Bug‘s MGH cannot remember one peep of criticism from the MSM of the relentless, shameful, destruction of Shorten’s reputation in countless hundreds of hours of parliamentary Question time that resulted, in the end, with even Labor people believing this “sycophantic, worker-hating, brown-noser” had only rocked up to Beaconsfield hours before the miners were rescued to bignote himself.

But come to present times and asking a retired judge to look into Scott Morrison’s ministerial grabs – something the solicitor-general found to be very, very naughty and an affront to our system of democratic governance – and what are the great bulk of the MSM calling it? Witchhunt! Morrison has already apologised. Time to move on!

And don’t get us started about how they’ll be carrying on when the RoboDebt RC comes around! What about those four pink-batt deaths, hey!!!!

And, of course, it was not all looking back in those nine years when it comes to Labor, was it, MSM? We might have forgotten Tim Wilson but not his unethical, unprincipled, unheard-of, assault on parliamentary practice and probity, his taxpayer-funded parliamentary road trip to debunk something that was only Labor Party policy before the 2019 election.

Not a peep of criticism. Still, that’s the way of it, MSM? It’s hard to criticise the natural party of Australian politics when it’s in power. But how dare Labor try to wrangle a second term by highlighting the total lack of any worthwhile vision, the financial mismanagement, the record rorts, the scandals, the corruption, the laziness, the incompetence, the money wasting of LNP governments. Right, Phillip? Right, Chris? Right, just about everyone who works for Newscorpse? Right, far too many at the ABC?

Well, in awarding the Arse-Licker trophy for August to the great bulk of the MSM politics suckeratti, we can only say: “Tough titty, guys! Or to paraphrase Kim’s response to Epponnee Rae’s crying: “Stop whinging, it’s Labor’s turn now!”

We’ll leave the last words to our trophy head judge: “We accept that there are a few journos in the MSM who are excused from this award. They’ll know who they are. There’s only a handful, sadly.

“As for the rest, our only problem was in working out whose arses they were licking clean. Rupert Murdoch’s? Peter Costello? Ita’s? Those three Liberal prime ministers? The LNP’s, generally?

“Regardless, a clutch of cloacas, a chorus-line of coits, have been clinically licked as clean as is humanly possible without resorting to a high-pressure hose. Get off your knees, all of you, and take a bow!

“But for heaven’s sake, go and gargle some mouth-freshener. Your breaths are terrible!”