In the effort to appear “neutral” when discussing the two leaders - there&rs

In the effort to appear “neutral” when discussing the two leaders - there’s this weird gymnastics where journalists have to pretend that pointing out that Scott Morrison is a nearly universally hated, incompetent, and downright awful person who never takes responsibility - is somehow meant to be balanced out by throwing in any random possible criticism of Anthony Albanese to create appear like they’re not taking sides. 

Like the ABC recently kept repeating that Albo “hasn’t been tested” in an election, like he’s fresh, he’s new, he’s only been opposition leader for one term (you know they generally quit after one or two unsuccessful terms right? Like “oh he’s only been in the position for THE LONGEST POSSIBLE TIME since Shorten’s resignation” because Morrison delayed the election as much as he could??? Morrison has been PM barely longer than Albo has been Opposition leader - but that’s not an issue???)Scott Morrison got elected in 2007 and had everyone above him fall over and walk into the gap left over, then sat back and let the states do everything for him while he criticised them. Anthony Albanese has been in Parliament since 1996 - which is longer than a lot of young voters have been alive for.

Like Morrison is actually the fresher one, the newer one, and has a far shorter list of accomplishments. He was treasurer under the worst economic performance of a government since WW2. That’s something neat to know. The ABC also said Anthony Albanese hasn’t had a treasurer portfolio, so oh no, can we know he can make economic policies? Um. The treasurer is a separate position from Prime Minister. Kevin Rudd wasn’t treasurer and Labor avoided a recession during the GFC. Morrison was treasurer before being PM and we STILL went into a recession BEFORE the pandemic hit during globally fine economic conditions!

This false sense of balance is bullshit. This is trying to nitpick with a fine comb to find nonsense of no importance, and no impact, just to appear like they aren’t favouring one side over the other - while the massive Murdoch media empire has no qualms of just outright fucking lying and saying the Liberals are superior despite the evidence against it. If you want to criticise Labor - go after their position on coal. Their climate change policy is superior to the “continue to cut climate action funding and pretend it doesn’t exist” attitude of the Coalition, but can they be doing more? Why did they not fight harder to stop the stage 3 tax cuts to the wealthy - when they themselves said it was an economically stupid decision, and they could’ve just fought to pass the tax cuts to low and middle income earners and ONLY those? Like that’s a real question to ask - not “hey, pop quiz. Cite ever changing numbers for us and dance as we make up nonsense arguments to drag you down to a lower playing field with this monkey who throws shit at poor people and calls it an economic policy.”