Here’s Jessica van Vonderen’s lead-in to the relevant yarn on the ABC News 7pm bulletin out of Brisbane last night: “Senator Lidia Thorpe has refused to resign after her vocal protest during King Charles’s visit to Parliament House.”

Interesting, the washed up, old, hacks who compile this column thought at the time. Lidia Thorpe, they concluded, might be as mad as a cut snake but no one can deny her strong beliefs about the need for a treaty with First Nations people and her unwavering commitment to highlighting what those peoples have had to endure since white settlement in 1788.

And they immediately thought that Thorpe would be totally convinced that her actions at Parliament House were entirely appropriate, so why should she “refuse to resign”?

The ABC segment then ran with some “mob” reaction to her protest stunt – some for her, some against – but no-one called for her resignation.

But hold on. Wait! Here’s van Vonderen again. “The Opposition Leader suggested resignation…”

Ah, there it is. Delayed and disguised, for sure, but for Aunty another “Peter Dutton says” moment. Surely Senator Thorpe should have listened to the racist and divisive pollie who fully backed the racist and divisive No campaign at the Voice referendum! But, no, she stubbornly carries on. And she does know how to carry on.

A quick aside. We at The Bug think Dutton and Thorpe have much in common. For their opposition to The Voice for completely opposing reasons, they’ve both managed to kick treaty and truth-telling more than just into the long grass; way behind the never-never.

Given the hammering the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has been copping on social mediocre for, to many minds, blindly following commercial media down the “Peter Dutton says” rabbit hole, you would think they’d try their best to hose down such criticisms.

That segment could easily have been kicked off with the differing reactions from the mob to Senator Thorpe’s protest. Leading with her “refusal to resign” is pretty damned stupid and leaves Aunty open to fresh criticism that it really does think that what Peter Dutton has to say on just about any issue is not only always worthy of extended and sometimes favoured coverage but that the likes of Senator Thorpe should at the very least heed his career recommendations.

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Staying with Aunty, here’s one paragraph that caught our eye from a lengthy think piece on the state election from Queensland political reporter Rachel Stewart.

Not even close enough, Rachel, to be offered a cigar. Try 35 years since 1989. Labor has been in power for all but a handful of those years, showing what’s possible in a supposedly very conservative state when you get rid of the horrendous gerrymander that propped up Bjelke-Petersen and other Country/National leaders for far too long.

And although Rachel might point to Labor’s poor showing in Queensland on the federal scene for some time – and that’s true enough – Media Glass House still questions her statement that “Queensland is usually considered a conservative state”.

For 30 years out of 35, Rachel, the people of Queensland have happily accepted that a Labor government could manage a state’s affairs reasonably well enough to earn re-election again and again. That’s far from being conservative.

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Another fine example of ABC “balance” was the composition of its Q&A panel on Monday night.

It consisted of (left to far right below) Queensland senators Murray Watt (Labor), Larissa Waters (Greens), and Susan McDonald (LNP). Filling the fourth position was former state LNP MP and minister Scott Emerson.

Two LNP reps out of four on a show aired just days from the state election. Some balance!

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The daily turdbloid newsletter of the Bowen Hills branch of the LNP – aka The Courier-Mail – is doing its best to downplay the stickiest issue its leader David Crisafulli has faced (or fucked up more correctly) during the state election campaign.

Today’s front page and a big story inside (below) spruik the move by Robbie Katter, leader of the Katter’s Australia Party, to defuse Crisafulli’s problem by supposedly “abandoning” his private member’s bill seeking to wind back abortion law reform laws. (below)

Crisafulli’s inability to handle the subsequent questions posed to him about how he as potential premier would handle such a bill and his own MPs has seen a lift in Labor’s poll numbers.

But hang on, what’s that line buried in today’s story……

So in fact Katter hasn’t backflipped. He still wants to rewind abortion laws.

In fact his statement will give succour to those who suggest “backflip” is a totally wrong word to apply to pollies who change their positions, since a backflip actually means the person executing it ends up facing in the same direction they were before.

Exactly Katter’s position, yet The Courier-Mail glosses over that nicety.

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