I caught ABC late news the other night and this effect you...

I caught ABC late news the other night and this effect you mention was in overdrive. There was a piece that started President Xi has invited Albanese to China - I expected a decent spiele on the likely subjects for discussion, but it was only 1/2 a sentence then it pivoted to the point of the piece which was all about whether Albanese will spend the time hassling Xi about 1 journalist being held there.

The next story was about military ships sailing into Sydney Harbour, but it was all about AUKUS and the joint military exercises that they are running, complete with navy lads machine-gunning into the water off the side of a boat.

The next story started with the something games are going to be held in the Solomon Islands and I thought hey wow, I'll bet we'll be there I wonder how broad they are? But I didn't get that. After 1/2 a sentence about how China built an athletics stadium for the country, it went on to say that while china paid for it and a whole heap of infrastructure including roads and schools, China 'hadn't bothered' to fund everything because a hospital had run out of paracetamol and that elective surgeries had been postponed. The whole story was about how far Chinese foreign aid hadn't gone.

The narrative they weaved throughout the whole show - at least until they got to the footy results - was obvious. They must think we're awfully stupid that they have to lay it on that thick.