This column yesterday promised to compare the ABC’s online coverage at 9.38pm on Tuesday night after Jim Chalmers’ Budget speech with its coverage at 9.38pm last night after Peter Dutton’s Budget reply.

The two moments are shown at top. Now why did we do this?

MGH yesterday did wonder what the national broadcaster highlighted in the hour-and-a-half after Chalmers’ speech ended and the good folk at the ABC decided Peter Dutton’s mob’s response was more important than detailing the goodies and baddies contained in the 2025-26 budget. And, yes, we don’t know how long Dutton’s “hoax” attack had been top-shelf treatment before then.

As far as we can find out, Dutton’s budget attack kept its prominence until the next morning.

So did Aunty at 9.38pm – or even earlier – last night give Labor’s response to Dutton’s offering pride of place in their coverage? A fair and balanced go one would expect from the national taxpayer-funded broadcaster? As the bitter, washed-up, hacks who compile this column guessed rightly in touting the 9.38pm comparison yesterday, of course Aunty didn’t.

And we won’t bore you BUGgers with the grapics we snared but trust us; Dutton’s pitch remained the ABC News online Budget focus throughout the night and to this morning. Any Labor criticism of Dutton’s speech never got a run.

Perhaps Labor didn’t send the ABC a media release just after 8pm last night? Silly buggers if that’s the case. But we can also take a guess and suspect that no journos at the ABC called Labor for a comment either?

Conclusion: The ABC has been rather “Peter Dutton says” obsessed for a very long time now. On face value, our 9.38pm comparisons back that up to the hilt.

And we’ll stick with our firmly held – and we think correct – view that it’s only since the 2022 election that the ABC decided that in the interest of balance and objectivity, Peter Dutton Says on any issue under the sun deserves coverage, his views sometimes aired before the government making a policy announcement and sometimes a double dip from Dutton or his shadows, giving the Opposition more minutes than Labor.

The ABC was nowhere near as interested in this “fair and balanced” approach when Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese were opposition leaders.

Ita Buttrose and Kim Williams should never have been let anywhere near the ABC.

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