A common accusation thrown at our national public broadcaster the ABC is that it is far too Sydney-centric.

It’s a favourite theme of its critics, especially the Sydney-centric News Crap Australia which has largely vacated the regional Australia space.

Unfortunately, say our Media Glass House analysts,  the ABC itself often provides the ammo to keep the argument against it firing.

They point to an example offered today on the ABC News Online website where an opinion piece by the national broadcaster’s NSW political editor Ashleigh Raper tells readers that when it comes to elections “elections are done differently in NSW”.

NSW is heading to a state election on Saturday 25 March, and Ms Raper’s view is that because the state long ago legislated fixed election dates – every four years on the fourth Saturday in March – campaigns can be somewhat less than engaging for voters.

“There’s no guessing, no mounting anticipation and no drive to the governor’s house,” she writes.

“The fixed term takes the fun out of speculating when or why a government will decide to go to polls, which is often a sport for political observers elsewhere.

“But in a practical sense it also fails to provide a clear start to the campaign,” Ms Raper says before going into details about the promises made by both sides so far in the lead-up to the poll.

The item’s headline – which our MGH teams admit may not have been penned by Ms Raper – clearly states “Elections are done differently in NSW….”.

The only trouble is, they’re not.

Sure NSW has had fixed election dates for the past 30 years. But state election dates are also fixed by law in Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and the ACT.

Only Tasmania still allows the state premier to pick and choose when they head to the polls.

Surely, say our MGH teams, a little research would have done no harm to the story.

After all, you don’t need the James Webb Space Telescope to know Sydney and NSW are not the centre of the universe. Just a minute or two on a search engine would have sufficed.

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Our MGH researchers have asked among themselves if the lure of having free access to News Crap Australia online publications would influence their choice of private hospital if they needed to be admitted.

The discussion was sparked by an advertisement in the Brisbane turdbloid The Courier-Mail that advised its reader that a particular chain of private hospitals was offering just that. (below)

Their verdict was that it would not, although one suggested that the ability to read so many right-wing columnists would be very helpful if anyone was suffering acute constipation.

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Speaking of The Courier-Mail, to end we present a headline from its sports pages during the week about a big motor car race somewhere that took the fancy of our MGH staff.