“Anthony Albanese in hot water!” “Major mike slip!” “An own goal!” “Albanese caught joking..!” “His heated response!”

All of these comments issued on Nine News Queensland’s 6pm bulletin last night are proof once more – not that any was needed – of that bulletin’s right-wing political bias.

Let us explain. Nine News Queensland went hard last night with a monstrous beat-up of a private conversation on the sidelines of a major Pacific conference in Tonga.

As the images (at top) show, a major US diplomat told Albanese that his country had considered doing something similar to Australia’s just announced policing deal – worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars – for the Pacific but that the Australian ambassador Kevin Rudd had told them no to.

Albanese’s harmless little joke in response? “You can go us halvies on the cost if you like.”

Any decent, objective, viewer of that exchange would have seen it for the harmless banter it was. Any fair, decent, news producer would have checked it over and quickly dismissed its news value.

But not Nine News Queensland and not newsreaders Andrew Lofthouse and Melissa Downes and reporter Claudia Vrdoljak. This after all, was a Labor PM worthy of a full Nine News putdown that clearly shows that while you might be able to take Peter Costello out of Nine Entertainment Co, you will never take right-wing bias out of its Nine Network newsrooms.

Here’s Downes just before the second ad break: “Anthony Albanese in hot water over a major mike slip. His heated response.”

Was Albanese in hot water over this? Only the hot water Nine wanted to pour all over him.

Then there was Lofthouse when the piece finally aired later in the bulletin: “An own goal in a hot mike moment has overshadowed a major Pacific policing deal struck by the PM in a bid to counter Chinese influence in the region”.

Did this “own goal” really overshadow the forum? Not at all.

That didn’t stop reporter Vrdoljak adding her view that Pacific leaders were “not so impressed” with “a private conversation with the US Deputy Secretary of State being caught on camera”. She provided no firm evidence through attribution of any such state of disquiet.

To reiterate our challenge to Nine News Queensland and its producers: how on earth was Albanese’s harmless little aside so devastating? And so damaging to him? Is there anything in Albanese’s little quip that he should be red-faced and embarrassed over? We’ll answer that one for you. Nein! No! Nyet! Nope!

The MGH once again stresses a basic point: would this have been of any major interest to right-leading Nine News Queensland had Peter Dutton been PM and engaged in such minor banter? We think not. No wait! If they had run with the piece, it would no doubt have been to congratulate Dutton for trying to squeeze a couple of hundred million out of our major defence partner for admirable work in the Pacific aimed at keeping China at bay! Nice try to save Oz some money, PM! We love your work!

We think Albanese was perfectly in his rights to question the journalistic ethics of the news hound that shot and recorded that private conversation and agree with him the journos present must have been pretty bored to think it was newsworthy. We agree with his final, parting, advice to those scribe to “chill out”.

Still, we can’t blame Nine News for keeping its hand in. That news service will no doubt be front and centre as the mainstream media kicks off the 2025 federal election campaign with “the major first-day gaffe that has cost Albanese any chance of a second term!”

Count it in folks. It’s coming.

Finally, a big shout-down to ABC News last night for also reporting on this supposedly major “hot mike” stumble by Albanese.

The Bug, generally and through its media columns such as the MGH, has sadly commented a number of times that the ABC and Nine News Queensland’s nightly bulletins seem to share an enormous amount of DNA, even though to be fair, ABC News with only a 30-minute bulletin is only half as bad as its commercial rival.

At least Stephen Dziedzic, the ABC’s Asia Pacific region reporter, did say the Pacific nation leaders weren’t bothered at all by Albanese’s “hot-mike” moment.

And fair enough too. They had no reason to be. Clearly, they saw it as the monstrous beat-up it so obviously was.

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