Can the bitter, washed-up, hacks who compile this column be frank here? We’d love to stop calling Channel 9 in Brisbane the LNP’s Mount Coot-Tha branch. Ditto the moniker we’ve given its 6pm news bulletin – the David Crisafulli Hour!
But we’ll be carrying on with these pisstake titles on the strength of last night’s (Tuesday’s) bulletin.
Newsreader Andrew Lofthouse set the scene for the state politics segment thus: “Campbell Newman’s public service cuts were wrong and will not be repeated …. that was the message from Opposition Leader David Crisafulli …”
For the next minute and 34 seconds, state politics reporter Tim Arvier (above, talking billions) guided us through the highlights of Crisafulli’s Queensland Media Club address. It’s been 11 years since Newman’s “infamous” PS cuts and Crisafulli if he becomes Premier in a year’s time will be embracing the public service! There on the screen was a three-point plan to enhance the public service’s role. There at the lectern was Crisafulli arguing forcibly that none of the big four issues facing the state had improved under Labor.
And now for Labor’s rebuttal, given a full 14 seconds. Well, not quite that long given Arvier’s leadin: “The ALP says it’s a matter of trust and the LNP’s promise of no sackings can’t be believed”. For the rest of that short time, Transport Minister Mark Bailey managed to get in that Crisafulli was a cabinet minister when Newman cut 14,000 PS jobs as a one-term wonder.
So that’s it then? No! Arvier now milks a further one minute and 25 seconds getting stuck into Bailey, showing in the process that as far as news sense up at the LNP’s Mount Coot-tha branch goes, last week’s news never really gets stale!
Arvier explains that while Bailey was sent out to attack Crisafulli and he was “able to remember the number of public servants cut by the Newman Government he wasn’t able to say key figures from his own portfolio, including the new cost of the Gold Coast faster rail project which last week Nine News revealed had blown out by at least 2.5 billion dollars”.
Well, last Friday’s bulletin said the cost had actually blown out by three billion but still; old news is new again, right, Timmy!
Arvier: “The minister also unable to say when he first learnt that the project was going to cost billions of dollars more”.
Cue some footage of Bailey bumbling along as arguably the worst minister in the Palaszvczuk government and saying he worked most days a week and couldn’t remember specific dates.
Arvier then does a final 19 seconds of to-camera editorialising while reminding us of the extent of that project’s blowout in costs and when we might finally get the total cost.
But how about this for getting costings wrong? Arvier … “that project was meant to cost around 2.6 billion dollars; on the current figures and what we know, it’s likely to be around 5.6 billion more…”
Note the MORE! So that’s 8.2 billion dollars then? Crikey, no wonder Bailey was reluctant to stump up that final figure! That infrastructure blowout is enough on its own to tip out a tired, out of puff and out of time government, right?
But that verbal blooper aside, how much longer is this yarn going to have legs, Timmy? Surely, there’ll be more blowouts – maybe not as large as Arvier’s slip of the tongue – worth smashing Labor over. Monthly leading up to the election? Perhaps tag-teamed with that total ongoing Nine News agreement with Voice for Victims that Palaszczuk is doing absolutely nothing to combat soaring youth crime that is crippling the state and terrorising its citizens?
And once the election campaign starts, all sorts of issues to hammer away at Labor so relentlessly that Nine News will make The Courier-Mail and The Sunday Mail look almost balanced and journalistic?
The MGH has no doubts that Arvier considers himself a fair and balanced newsman, slipped tongue aside. But we at the MGH bet to differ. We have no doubt whatsoever that if Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk had given that address as apparently originally planned, the report would have been far more critical and the time given to Crisafulli in response very, very, generous.
Clearly there are senior executives at Channel 9 and its news division who are determined to see the state Labor government gone next October. The MGH truly believes Arvier could try harder to distance himself from that LNP arse-licking cohort.
POSTSCRIPT: By the way, this is not Arvier’s fault but Bailey is the transport minister. There is no Labour Minister. Bailey is indeed a state Labor minister if that helps. Facts, like balanced and ethical reporting, used to be very important in Australian mainstream journalism. Not any more.
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