A whiff of wastewater that wafted over the Cooks River has finally enveloped the Prime Minister.

For weeks, Albanese insisted a government grant given to his local golf club was part of a campaign to clean up the Cooks River. It was needed, he insisted, to address long-running wastewater problems. He berated the ABC for failing to report his vital public-health justification.

He regaled the parliament with fecal-laden accounts of Marrickville shores awash with turds when the Cooks River broke its bank.

He told the terrible tale of the Club’s septic tank that had stood for almost a century, which the grant would upgrade.

Sewerage is close to Albanese’s heart. Tom Uren, the Minister for Urban and Regional Development in the glory days of the Whitlam government, was like a father to Albanese. And responsible for the National Sewerage Program.

As Neville Wran put it and Whitlam loved to repeat: ‘It was said of Caesar Augustus that he found Rome brick, and left it marble. It will be said of Gough Whitlam that he found the outer suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane unsewered, and left them fully flushed.’

Sadly, this week there was no such glory for the PM who was forced to ‘change his position’ when Infrastructure Department officials confirmed at Senate estimates that the grant did not cover sewerage works. That’s a shame, because an excess of excrement is threatening to engulf the PM.

It turns out the money is going not to address a malodorous threat to health and safety but to renovate the clubhouse and furnish it with a new bar, a pro shop and, most importantly, a dog-walking station.

One can imagine the urgency of the last item. After four years at Kirribilli House, perhaps Toto is refusing to perambulate in his old stamping ground unless taxpayers provide suitable facilities.

Constitutional law expert Anne Twomey described the $6 million grant as an example of ‘grey corruption’ and called the process under which the $560 million invitation-only grants were awarded a farce.

It operates on a simple principle: choose the lucky recipients, then construct the paperwork explaining why they deserve the money. It is the political equivalent of shooting an arrow into a wall and painting the target around it.

The Prime Minister insists he was merely being a good local member, so good Marrickville Golf Club was the only golf club invited to apply.

It also happens to be a club of which he was an honorary member, but how was he to know, he asks. So, what if he was photographed speaking there? So, what if he has 60 personal staff and 1,400 public servants in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet whose business it should be to tell him?

It must be disconcerting to the club that conferred the honour on him that it is so worthless in his eyes that he didn’t remember receiving it.

Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie, who previously resigned over the allocation of funding to a club of which she was a member, has pursued the truth in a Senate inquiry and Senate estimates, and argues the prime minister owes parliament an apology.

Manager of opposition business Dan Tehan pressed the prime minister to fess up. ‘This is an opportunity for the prime minister to clear the air,’ he said. ‘Just admit you got it wrong and tell the truth.’

Albanese’s problem is that every time he attempts to clear the air, the smell gets worse.

And he is such a stranger to the truth, he wouldn’t recognise it, if it mugged him in broad daylight.

The PM was already in trouble for trying to dig up dirt on independent MP Helen Haines because she dared to question the probity of the invitation-only pork-barrelling grants which almost exclusively favoured Labor electorates.

But instead of addressing her concerns, the prime minister’s office prepared a five-page dossier raising questions about funding requests she had made for her electorate, including suggestions that journalists might investigate possible conflicts of interest.

Albanese insisted this wasn’t a ‘shit’ sheet, merely a document demonstrating Haines’ integrity. That’s one way of spinning it.

The prime minister has been leading a chorus of Labor politicians and progressives urging Australians to lower the temperature of political debate, show respect and practise compassion.

But despite the fact that the alleged assailant seems to be a deranged pro-Palestinian tree hugger, that criticism has frequently been aimed at One Nation cartoons.

Heaven forbid that anyone should laugh about politics.

ABC Managing Director Hugh Marks struggled for weeks to see anything objectionable about a Race Around the World video clip that fantasised about sodomising and murdering Gina Rinehart.

And despite a billion-dollar budget to employ international investigative journalists, Marks still hasn’t bothered to verify if the ABC’s Gaza correspondent was a Hamas operative, as alleged by the Israel Defence Forces.

Marks is however ‘very concerned’ about the unauthorised use of Bluey, the cartoon blue heeler, in a One Nation cartoon in which Bluey and Mr Andrews ran over each other.

Marks was equally unamused by Bluey and Robert Irwin being held up at knifepoint by a crocodile in a colouring-in book handed out in Victoria, the crime state of Australia.

‘That is both shocking and disrespectful to the children of Australia who love that character so much,’ Marks pontificated.

This is absurd. Suggesting that One Nation cartoons have led to increased violence in Australia is like blaming Wile E. Coyote for road rage.

Labor’s attacks on One Nation’s Please Explain cartoons are all about disarming a potent political opponent and advancing a thinly veiled censorship agenda in the Digital Duty of Care legislation.

Thankfully, Labor was forced into another backdown this week when Reuben Kirkham of the Free Speech Union demonstrated that the bill could be used not just to shut down legal pornography but Senator Mehreen Faruqi. Faruqi was flagged by the algorithm under ‘material or conduct that counsels, promotes, encourages, urges or praises a terrorist act’ for a speech about freedom of expression.

However much that may be true, the way to counter the Greens’ insidious counsel is through argument not censorship.

Instead of a Digital Duty of Care bill, the government should commit to an old-fashioned duty to truth.

After all, when the sewage hits the fan, the last thing Australia needs is a government that is trying to censor the smell.