Plagiarist Peter Gleeson, The Courier-Mail columnist who apologised late in the week for “accidentally” plagiarising another scribe’s work, has been found to be plagiarising again, no doubt accidentally.

Amanda Meade in her weekly Beast media diary for Guardian Australia reported that a Gleeson column back in May (below right) included a swag of information, word for word, from a state parliamentary website about Queensland’s system of governance, all unattributed. Accidentally, most likely.

The amount of the “accidental” pilfering was 62 per cent, as Amanda kindly coloured in for her column.

Amada wrote: “We asked Gleeson for comment on this cut and paste job but he did not respond.

“The revelation comes after Gleeson was caught lifting four paragraphs of political analysis by the Brisbane reporter Josh Bavas, who wrote his piece for the ABC in 2020 when the deputy premier Jackie Trad stood down from cabinet.

“Gleeson’s feature formed part of a 12-page “Special Investigation by Peter Gleeson” in the Saturday paper headlined “Power and Palaszczuk”. It was a hit job on the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk.

“When we earlier asked the “Andrew Bolt of Queensland” if he would resign over that scandal, he said simply “nope”. Doubtless someone with fewer connections than the Sky News host and former Murdoch editor of several mastheads would have been out the door.”

The bitter old hacks who throw the MGH together want to thank Amanda for giving them some slim hope that the craft of mainstream mediocre journalism is not dead quite just yet.

There is still someone in the business who clearly saw Gleeson’s 12-page assault last weekend for the hit job it clearly was. And Amanda! The “Andrew Bolt of Queensland!” Beautiful!

No doubt Amanda and the MGH are both eagerly awaiting the punishment The Courier-Mail editor Chris Jones will mete out to his staffer who know appears to be a serial plagiarist, accidental or otherwise.

Our best bet is that Gleeson fits the bill as a Newscorpse writer so perfectly in all other aspects other than the occasional, silly and forgivable “accidental” plagiarism that Jones won’t even make him give back 62 per cent of the salary time spent on that column.

A rap on the knuckles will be enough for a brilliant wordsmith who gets Australian politics so very, very right.

***

The Bug generally and its Media Glass House has been having a bit of fun with our old mate “Gleeso” of recent times so in the interests of fairness, we reproduce below his statement in The Courier-Mail during the week of the plagiarism contained, wilfully on purpose or purely by accident, in his 12-page hit job on the Palaszczuk state government.

One thing The Bug and its Media Glass House do know for sure is that if the LNP had won the election back in 2020 this mid-term 12-page hatchet job would never, ever, have appeared.

That sad reality is a far greater indictment on what The Courier-Mail has become, along with its sister Sunday Mail – the LNP’s Bowen Hills branch – than the fact that one of its overpaid, over-rated, right-wing ranters and part-time LNP fundraisers can’t be bothered doing his own fucking work.