If Australian Broadcasting Corporation chair Ita Buttrose wants to understand why so many people think Aunty has lost its reputation for balanced, professional, journalism, she should take a look at what poor dear newsreader Jessica van Vonderen was forced to read out at the start of the 7pm news out of Brisbane on Sunday night.

Take it away, Jessica!

“Tonight, anger growing over the government’s proposed superannuation reform ahead of a sitting week in Canberra….

Boy, oh boy, aren’t Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers in trouble over their ill-thought-out decision to up the tax from 15 per cent to 30 per cent on earnings above the $3 million very well-off Australians have in their superannuation nest eggs!

And who is responsible for this understandable growing anger over the plan? Some federal body representing superannuants? The Council for the Aged? Some peak body charged with ensuring a fair and equitable retirement for all!

The tape rolls forward and the segment quickly reveals just who is getting increasingly angry; the federal Opposition generally and shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor in particular! No-one else.

Yep! That lead-in sounds very much like it’s been carved off the general attack lines of the large bulk of the nation’s mainstream media, namely that the tax change is a broken promise that, hopefully in the vast majority of the MSM’s collective minds, will cost Labor dearly at the next election.

Just one extra word, whoever wrote that lead-in … “Opposition anger”. Or was the intention to promulgate the idea pushed by the clown at The Australian who declared almost all Australians were appalled by the tax change?

And wasn’t that notion blown out of the water by the Newspoll that lobbed a few hours after that 7pm news service out of Brisbane!

To be fair, Jessica’s introduction to the full segment is balanced; both the Opposition and the government’s positions are summarised.

The MGH could quibble with the use of the word “reform” that means something is being improved, which it is in this case, by the way, and “changes” would be more journalistic. But that ship sailed long ago. Everything’s a reform nowadays.

Tom Lowry’s report was reasonably okay, but to say that the tax changes would hit more people “than first suggested” was a stretch. The government made it clear the changed tax rates would not be indexed. It’s the way governments make money down the track. Just like in income tax rates, as Lowry admitted.

The MGH could also charge Lowry with his loose language over how the changed rules would “double the tax on super accounts containing more than $3 million”. Not quite so. Just income over the $3 million mark. Not that hard to have clarified that. And 30 per cent is still way below what a lot of Australians pay at the top end of their incomes.

The MGH simply thinks that everyone at Aunty should be bending over backwards not to look anything like the nation’s woeful mainstream mediocre at the moment. Balanced and professional; not a partner in crime.

The bottom line is that first impressions count. And “anger growing” suggests more than just the anger of a shadow Treasurer who hopes one day to leave the national accounts a trillion dollars in debt by the time his work in the job is done.

Ita Buttrose should have a stern word with whoever wrote Jessica’s lead-in but the MGH is not holding its breath.

And while she’s at it, she might have a yarn to someone else at the ABC. We’ll keep breathing in and out in the meantime.