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That time of the year again when ABC's "flagships" start their "well earned break". A joke as the rest of us battle on to Christmas and beyond.

Episode 3: The well-earned break. (From Quadrant)

The ABC is thrown into chaos yet again, this time by a clerical error that sees all but a handful of radio and TV hosts and journalists ordered to take their holidays at the same time. The most senior ABC staffer still on the job turns to her Twitter and Facebook friends to fill the reportorial void created by a depopulated newsroom.

That evening’s news broadcasts lead with the scoop that Tony Abbott cannot tell the difference between a burqa and a niqab and is therefore irredeemably opposed to every woman’s right to be oppressed in a liberated, post-modern sort of way.

A running gag in this episode features supremo Mark Scott, who learnt his journalism at Fairfax and bills himself as the ABC’s editor-in-chief. Eager to help out during the staffing crisis, he sets out to report a story on how the Navy is waylaying ships loaded with live cattle in order to torture their crews with hot engine parts. Sadly, just as he is about to start calling  favourite refugee advocates, the plumbers arrive to install a 14-carat executive toilet, obliging him to file countless Twitter updates on their progress.

The odd thing is that no viewer notices the slightest difference between normal ABC news coverage and the stream of undiluted social-media ranters that replaces it.