Premier Steven Miles and his Labor team have Buckley’s chance of being re-elected come October based on a startling – nay, amazing! – fact revealed on Nine News Queensland’s 6pm bulletin last night (Wednesday).

Twenty minutes into the bulletin, newsreader Melissa Downes in a promo plug for an upcoming story revealed that each and every person who signed a petition circulated by a north Queensland politician was “a Queenslander terrified”.

“Tonight,” Melissa continued grimly, “the calls for Castle Law, the right to use any force necessary to protect your home and your territory”.

And a little later: “Public support is growing for a controversial law by a north Queensland MP that would allow Queenslanders to use deadly force against intruders on their property. Almost 23,000 people have signed a petition to approve the so-called Castle Law.”

Almost unbelievable, is it not? A petition circulated by the Member for Hinchinbrook Mick Dametto has been signed exclusively by “terrified” Queenslanders!

Now, of course, that would be Nine News Queensland’s fervent hope, based on the battering that bulletin has given alleged out-of-control youth crime throughout Queensland for many months now.

In fact, we at The Bug can only imagine the enormous difficulty that Mr Dametto would have had in securing that amount of signatures, especially if all those fine folk were too terrified to leave their homes. There would be no petition signing at a footpath meet-and-greet booth! That would be far too easy.

We at The Bug can but close our eyes and picture Dametto, clipboard and petition sheets in hand, taking whatever time was needed for terrified residents to reluctantly open their doors just a little, before asking him to pass his petition sheet through a heavily barred window in the adjacent loungeroom.

“And move away but stay in full view with your hands in the air, okay! If your Castle Law gets through, I could very well be packing heat!”

Well, that’s the scenario the Nine News executives would be hoping for after months of campaigning to achieve just that result – a terrified Queensland – and as a longer-term result of that, the eviction of Queensland Labor come October 26 and a crime-free, ambulance-ramping-free, cost-of-living pain-free existence under Premier David Chrisafulli.

And what are we to make of the overall story itself, promoted savagely in the earlier 4pm news and during Tipping Point, a story so important it was kept to the very end of the hour-long service?

It was an horrendous beat-up of course, to match the hyperbole associated with the many plugs the yarn received. More on that in part-two of this yarn tomorrow.

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