This column has banged on relentlessly for a long time now that our woeful mainstream mediocre has given Peter Dutton a dream run in his almost three years as Opposition Leader.

What Peter Dutton has had to say on any matter has often been seen as more important than anything the Albanese government has had to say. Sadly the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has also been fascinated with “Peter Dutton Says” or frames news reports generally to favour Dutton in some way. Sometimes, first and last bite at any cherry and any government announcement, no matter how mundane.

And Aunty’s 7pm Queensland news last night (Saturday’s) proved both those points. The news presenter’s opening spiel was a cracker: “Only a matter of hours apart, Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton have reached the same conclusion; that Australia needs to own the strategic Port of Darwin”.

Firstly, whoever wrote than for the poor lass to read out has got it terribly wrong, by accident or design. Albanese phoned into the ABC’s Darwin radio studios the day before to announce his government’s buyback plan. Guardian Australia ran the story the next morning.

Last night’s news presenter having both leaders reaching the same policy position at almost the same time cleverly avoided – by accident or design – who thought of it first. A quick note here that Aunty earlier last week was at great pains to point out that Albanese had agreed to match an earlier LNP $10 million pledge to improve outback flood monitoring equipment. Credit given to who promised it first, as it should be. Do you buy a new car from a dealer promising only to match a rival’s earlier offer?

We then move onto Greg Jennett’s report last night. He kicks off (sorry!) with Dutton bonking a cameraman in the head with a wayward kick of a football. But then it was straight into some tough talking from Dutton on how he as PM would quickly put port back into safe Aussie hands! Take that, you commies.

Albanese then gets to have his short spray on the issue. By accident or design, Jennett has no interest in spending just a few seconds making it clear that Dutton was responding to the PM’s intentions. Matching that promise.

A bit later on, Jennet tries his best to debunk Albanese’s claim that he had told the Chinese owners of the 99-year lease of his buy-back plan. Albanese “insists” he told the port’s Chinese owners of the buy-back plans but then Jennett says the owners “dispute” that. We then see a letter from the Chinese owners saying they had not had any discussions with either the Northern Territory or the federal government. There’s a bloody big difference between being alerted to something and then having discussions later.

Maybe someone should explain to Jennett that the comments from both sides are not mutually exclusive. Both can be right. As arguably one of this nation’s finest politics reporters, Jennett has – by accident or design – missed the basic logic of that. Some critics might unfairly suggest Jennett is trying his liberal-headed …. sorry!… level-headed best to infer that Albanese is lying.

Now, can anyone of you BUGgers out there guess who gets final billing in Jennett’s report? Yes, shots of Dutton walking and then saying something! Dutton first and last! Who would have guessed, eh?

SMH subs front up again … and again

We will never give up! We will never surrender! We will fight to the death to make sub-editors at The Sydney Morning Herald see commonsense and logic.

You BUGgers out there will know what we are referring to! The habit by subs at The Sydney-Morning Herald, whenever the paper has a wraparound (usually Hardly Normal) in its attempts to survive, to folio the inside fake front cover as page 3.

And you’d all be aware our relentless campaign that’s been running for many, many, months now to get those lazy, incompetent, SMH subs to stop calling stories that continue from that page 3 as “From Front Page” or “From Cover Page.” Okay sometimes they don’t use caps.

We rouse at them regularly but any respite from highlighting their stupidity never lasts long – cue last Wednesday night’s subbing shift in fact.

Here’s page 3 of Thursday’s edition…

The SMH subs stuffed up twice over stories that flowed inside the book from that PAGE THREE!

For the umpteenth but clearly not the last time, here’s our message to those SMH subs and we’re going to use Trump caps for emphasis!

PAGE THREE IS NOT, NOT EVER, NEVER HAS BEEN, A PAPER’S FRONT PAGE!

Will they ever get it right? Probably not. Should we continue with our campaign? Probably not but we will.

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