… even though he was wrong!

The Bug‘s Media Glass House team appreciates that in 555 days time, Channel 9’s state political editor Tim Arvier wants to claim he alone was responsible for bringing down the Queensland state government of Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

That 555 days, by the way, brings us to Saturday, 26 October in week 43 of 2024, the date of the next state election.

And there’s no doubt Tim might possibly deserve to brag seeing he has been doing his best to drag down Palaszczuk and her government over many months now with an endless barrage of stories critical of Queensland Labor and aired on the David Crisafulli Show – sorry, Channel 9’s Brisbane 6pm news.

His claim, if and when it comes, should be treated with a bit of scepticism, of course, because the other TV channel news have been banging away, trying their unlevel best as well to bring down the Polish Princess. Channel 7 is often red-hot in that ambition; even Commercial News Service Lite – sorry, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation – gets caught up in the frenzy now and then.

But back to Timmy. In his relentless campaign against the state government, perhaps he sees what he wants to see rather than what’s actually in front of him. A prime example is last night’s Nine’s main bulletin, where even newsreader Melissa Downes appeared to get caught up in the excitement over the possible demise of Stacia and Co, depending on how you want to interpret a new YouGov poll for The Courier-Mail.

But here’s the problem. The poll put the two-party preferred vote on 51-49 in favour of the LNP.

Tim saw things a little differently. Both his eyes – the right one and the righter one – saw the gap in the LNP’s favour at 52-48! Hence the chart he proudly displayed (right at top) on last night’s bulletin and the two-party-preferred vote he spoke excitedly about. And why wouldn’t he?

Gosh, if Jack McKay, the LNP publicist – sorry, the journalist – at the LNP’s Bowen Hills branch – sorry, The Courier-Mail – reckoned a poll publicised 555 days out from the next state election has the LNP in the box seat for victory at 51-49 2PP, what does a 52-48 split mean, hey, Timmy!

Clearly a landslide to David Crisafulli’s LNP team! Labor out of power for a decade! Put that champagne on ice, Tim, mate! But not for about 554 days to save power, okay?

Might also be the wise thing for Tim to remember that time-honoured adage … how does that one go again?

Oh, that’s right! 555 days is a long time in politics.

Don Gordon-Brown

EDITOR’S NOTE: Although The Bug might be run by bitter and twisted, washed-up, ex-hacks, we do adhere to that old-fashioned basic journalistic principle of fairness that means we’re duty bound to consider all possibilities to a topic, so we wondered: what if The Courier-Mail has gotten its own poll wrong and Tim Arvier has got the 52/48 split vote right? Hard to believe, we know, and it’s probably a million to one chance Tim’s on the money, but what if, eh? We tried to check the YouGov pollsters’ website without luck. So can we offer our deepest apologies to Tim Arvier up front just in case it turns out he was even righter than we already know and it’s The Courier-Mail that’s fucked things up as usual?