…. if it ever had it!

Media Glass House has lamented on occasions the sad reality that the online news site INQueensland has not turned out to be the middle-of-the-road forum this column’s compilers held high hopes for it.

A platform to provide much-needed balance to the excesses of Newscorpse and Nine’s Herald mastheads as they drift to the right.

Instead, INQueensland seems to attract “the best writers in Queensland” who also come across at times as LNP publicists, particularly the politics opinionistas.

The same can be said of whoever writes the online plugs for yarns, such as the recent one by Michelle Grattan (at top).

Her essay is a fairly reasonable one, explaining why Prime Minister Albanese didn’t appoint a First Nations Governor General in the wake of his Voice referendum loss and why he’s now determined to stay totally clear of any talk of a fresh republic referendum.

A summary of her piece could well be: Albanese has well and truly learnt his lesson that only grief will ensure if you don’t get bipartisan support for such referendums. Political grief that our woeful mainstream mediocre continues to pile on him today …. and will forever more. Well, until the next federal poll at least.

But it’s the MGH’s guess that Grattan would be far from impressed with the wording used in the home-page plug above.

On the possibility of another republican referendum, Grattan wrote: It’s not just the referendum’s defeat. There’s no community appetite to revisit the issue any time soon, and a now risk-averse PM doesn’t want another divisive fight in a second term, especially as history suggests it would be extremely hard to win it.

Certain minimum conditions would have to prevail for Australia to revisit the republic, including a conducive political climate, a pro-republic government with a hefty majority and the prospect of bipartisanship. None of these is on the horizon.

Or put another way: Albanese has learnt a very cautionary tale for fulfilling an election promise to hold The Voice referendum back when he thought he had cross-chamber support and the polls looked great. Stupid bastard!

It’s only the MSM screaming that it’s damaged him irrevocably. Someone at INQueensland obviously agrees even though Newspoll better-PM findings suggest otherwise, for the time being at least.

But here’s the bottom line: nowhere in Grattan’s piece does she say Albanese’s choice of GG shows how far his status has slipped. That was all in the mind of whoever crafted the home-page plug for her story.

Assumptions made, perhaps, on what his or her superiors would want and expect? Which, if true, is very sad indeed.

Want to be alerted immediately a new blog hits Australia’s longest running and most offensive satire site? Simply click on the Follow sign or the link below to be emailed new yarns the moment they are uploaded! The very second we go far too far – and trust us we will – you can then quickly unfollow via the three dots!

Follow The Bug Online on WordPress.com