QandA (Australian talk show)

Format

The program generally features a panel of five public figures, usually including politicians from each of the major federal parties (Labor and Liberal) as well as minor party politicians, media personalities, academics and celebrities, answering questions provided by viewers and the studio audience. On occasion, the show features a sole notable individual, such as the Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition. The program is broadcast live (in the eastern states) on ABC TV and online, in front of a studio audience. From October 2010, Q&A is also simulcast live on ABC News 24, allowing it to be viewed live across the country. In March 2015 ABC News 24 ceased simulcast of Q&A. When Federal Parliament isn't sitting, the show can be heard on ABC NewsRadio.

The program is usually broadcast from the ABC's studios in the Sydney suburb of Ultimo, but is often broadcast from various Australian metropolitan and rural centres. Audience participation is a key aspect of the program, with producers selecting members who represent "a diverse and well-balanced" group. Q&A is occasionally broadcast from other cities, with three shows being broadcast from other countries (Indonesia, India and China).

History

The program premiered on Thursday, 22 May 2008, at 9:30 pm on ABC TV. The program contains closed captions within its broadcast signal.

In 2010, Q&A moved to Monday nights and received a full season of 40 episodes. From 26 April 2010, Q&A introduced a Twitter feed; selected tweets discussing Q&A live are displayed on screen.

Tom Ballard, Virginia Trioli and Annabel Crabb have filled in for Tony Jones whilst he was on breaks.

Shoe-throwing

On 25 October 2010, former Prime Minister John Howard had a pair of shoes thrown at him from a member of the audience due to responses on his attitude to the Iraq War. The shoe-thrower was subsequently removed from the audience. Although Howard seemed indifferent to the incident, it was criticised by both Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, among other members of Parliament from both the Government and the Opposition. The shoe-thrower, environmental activist Peter Gray, died of cancer six months later; before he died, however, he asked the ABC to auction his shoes and the money to be donated to the Red Cross. Tony Jones announced the auction on the show on 9 May 2011, saying: "Before he died he asked that the shoes, which we kept, be auctioned for charity and the money given to the International Committee for the Red Cross for its work in Iraq. Former Prime Minister John Howard has expressed sorrow at Mr Gray's death and endorsed this idea. So the shoes, which symbolise the their disagreement over Iraq, will now be used to provide practical help to people in Iraq."

University student protest

The show was disrupted on 5 May 2014, when a group of university students began protesting against proposed higher education cuts. The group unfurled a banner over the back of the set and began to chant at Minister for Education Christopher Pyne, before they were removed from the studio while the live broadcast was replaced with footage of a musical performance from an earlier episode. In the lead-up to the protest, Pyne was the subject of several questions regarding education cuts and was heckled by members of the Socialist Alternative.

Zaky Mallah incident

The Zaky Mallah incident stirred great controversy and led to a boycott of Q&A by the Abbott Government, after a former terror suspect was invited to ask a question of a minister from the live audience. On 22 June 2015, Zaky Mallah posed a question about terrorism laws to Parliamentary secretary Steven Ciobo. Mallah had been convicted of threatening to kill Commonwealth officials in 2003. He was found not guilty of terrorism offences in 2005. Prior to his appearance on the program, Mallah had Tweeted that two female News Ltd journalists should be gang raped. He was known to Q&A's editorial team, attending three shows as an audience member since 2011, and twice being rejected as a panel member.

In his pre-approved question Mallah asked Ciobo "What would have happened if my [terrorism] case had been decided by the Minister and not the courts?" and confirmed he had pleaded guilty to threatening to kill officials. Ciobo replied that he understood that the acquittal was based on a technicality, so would be happy to see the government remove Mallah from the country. Mallah later was directed to respond, saying "The Liberals now have just justified to many Australian Muslims in the community tonight to leave and go to Syria and join ISIS because of ministers like him." Tony Jones called these comments "totally out of order". Mallah later wrote in Comment is free that he "hates ISIS" and his comments were "misinterpreted".

Following the incident, the ABC reported that it had been "roundly criticised for allowing Zaky Mallah... into the show's studio audience" and received over 1000 complaints. Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek described the decision to have Mallah on the show as "clearly an error of judgment." Prime Minister Tony Abbott condemned the broadcaster for "giving Mallah a platform," asking "Which side is the ABC on?" and saying that they had "betrayed" Australia. When the ABC repeated the program, he said that "heads should roll". He banned members of his Front Bench appearing on the program, later offering to permit them if the show was the ABC's Television section to News and Current Affairs. The ABC moved forward their plans to move the program, which an ABC source characterised as "the biggest example of editorial interference I've ever heard of".

The ABC released a statement apologising for including Mallah on a live event, and the ABC board appointed Shaun Brown and Ray Martin to audit Q&A, and issued a formal warning to Q&A executive producer Peter McEvoy. Martin, a veteran journalist, said that some critics of the program needed "a good lie down." ABC director Mark Scott conceded the producers had erred putting Mallah on live television, but defended the independence of the ABC's editorial decisions and argued there is merit in platforming "views that run contrary to accepted public values" in order to "understand the root cause" of alarming actions.

Substantially negative coverage of the ABC's conduct appeared in News Corporation owned papers, with some changing the ISIL flag to an ABC logo. The Daily Telegraph ran the headline "ABC doing the devil's work...". The Australian said "ABC exists in a parallel universe where impartiality and sound judgment are all but redundant".

ABC Radio's Jonathan Green accused some critics of Q&A of hypocrisy, but wrote: "Mallah should have been a no-go zone after he tweeted threats of sexual violence against columnists Miranda Devine and Rita Panahi a few months past, threats repeated with idiotic zeal after this fuss blew up".

Other commentators defended the ABC. Peter Greste said that Tony Abbott attempted to shut down debate in a crucial area of policy. Johnathan Holmes said that Malcolm Turnbull's portrayal of Zaky Mallah and his views is profoundly misleading, and that Q&A has been prevented from defending itself. Richard Ackland has suggested that "the hysteria over Zaky Mallah on Q&A would make Joseph McCarthy proud". In November 2015, Q&A's host Tony Jones said the Zaky Mallah furore and boycott was based on a 'big lie' [that Mallah supported ISIS].

Twittergate qanda

Not long after Zaky Mallah's session, the Twitter feed for Q&A, showing posts with the hashtag #qanda, accidentally let a tweet screen that ran "i prefer ones twitter feed to their biographies" from someone running under the username @AbbottLovesAnal, creating a huge uproar, with some commentators suggesting that the ABC needs to reign Q&A in.

Duncan Storrar

Duncan Storrar asked assistant government minister Kelly O'Dwyer a question on tax-free thresholds, asking why poorer people were not receiving similar tax relief from the Coalition government. He quickly gained widespread support as an embodiment for the 'battling Aussie'. The publicity from his question caused various media outlets to cover his life, with some outlets publishing allegations that he was a drug addict and that he had previously failed to care for his family. Storrar became traumatised as a result of his harsh media treatment. A crowdfunding campaign was started to buy him a new toaster, which played on O'Dwyer's remarks about depreciation treatment for small business, namely cafes.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied

In February 2017, panellist Yassmin Abdel-Magied defended sharia law, arguing that Islam is "the most feminist" of all religions. On the same program, Abdel-Magied stated in response to another panelist, Jacqui Lambie, that Sharia law is as simple as "me praying five times day," and that it says in Islam, "you follow the law of the land on which you are on". Some Islamic scholars have disputed this saying "they must comply with the laws of their country of residence without, at the same time, disobeying Islamic law."

Reception

According to the ABC Media Watch program Q&A has been criticised for "being biased to the left". An internal review commissioned by the ABC in the wake of the Zachy Mallah affair noted that "The most commonly expressed criticism is that the program lacks impartiality and maintains a left wing anti-Coalition bias," but the report found the criticism to be "not substantiated". After participating in the audit of the program, journalist Ray Martin wrote: "Q&A is a top-rating, professional but tightly controlled, live television discussion, in which the only thing that’s unpredictable are the panellists’ answers. Mind you, given the fact that the panellists are always politicians, academics or public figures their opinions are pretty well known beforehand. However, there’s no guarantee that on the night — under the glare of studio lights — they will always say what is expected of them. That occasionally adds a modicum of danger to the program."

David Marr said in 2015 "The ABC has only created a handful of great shows in recent years and Q&A is one of them." After being invited by the ABC to investigate Q&A for bias after the Zachy Mallah affair, journalist Ray Martin told the Sunrise that the Abbott Government's boycott of the program was "silly" and that he suspected "Tony Jones was just as tough on the Labor government as he is on the Coalition". After completing the audit, Martin wrote: "The simple fact is, like it or loath it, Q&A discusses serious politics and important social issues at a more intelligent level than anywhere else on Australian television." Former Liberal leader John Hewson said of the show: "I think you get few opportunities in politics to get your message across, and Q&A is one of them."

Various high profile Liberal-National politicians have complained of bias. In March 2015, during a debate on feminism, Liberal Deputy Leader Julie Bishop told the audience that she did not believe Tony Jones interrupted her because of gender, but because of her politics: "When I've come on Q&A and had Tony Jones has cut me off, I think it's because of what I'm saying. It’s the fact that I'm of a particular political persuasion." In May 2015, Senator James McGrath raised the issue with ABC Managing Director Mark Scott, telling Senate Estimates: "We have a flagship program here that consistently shows bias [against] those on the right or centre-right of politics.... I'm interested in how that comes about and how steps are not taken to ensure there are more balanced panels." During the Zachy Mallah affair, former Liberal Prime Minister Tony Abbott reportedly told his Party Room that the program is a "lefty lynch mob". In his first appearance on the show as Prime Minister in June 2016, Malcolm Turnbull described Tony Jones as a "a very good spokesman for the ALP".

A number of high-profile conservative journalists have complained of bias and boycott the program. After Tony Jones suggested a new Conservative Party led by then Liberal Party could be called "Cory Bernardi’s Golden Dawn", Andrew Bolt called Jones a "Leftist" who had had to apoligise for "giving a platform to an Islamist jailed for making threats to kill, helping him to ambush an Abbott Government minister. He has had to apologise to me, a conservative, for a show claiming I was a racist. It has had to apologise to former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard for an audience member throwing his shoes at him. Last night Jones had to issue yet another apology - sorry, " clarification" - to a conservative, this time Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi."

After the Mallah affair, Janet Albrechtsen wrote that she was boycotting the program because "Free speech on Q&A means stacking the panel, the audience and the questions to skew left." Piers Ackerman wrote: "The show is scripted and Jones directs the show, only coming undone when the rare panel member challenges his supercilious views." Liberal power broker Michael Kroger and conservative journlists Miranda Devine and Tom Switzer also boycott the show. Following the ABC's review of the Zachy Mallah affair, Gerard Henderson wrote that the ABC had engaged "leftists" who cleared the program of "being accused of leftism". Broadcaster Steve Price described a July 2016 question put to him about violence against women and the ensuing verbal altercation he had with journalist Van Badham as an "ambush".

Following his audit of the program, Ray Martin wrote that the show had a "chronic imbalance" whereby women were underrepresented on the panel and that the program was "Sydney-centric".

Most frequent guests

The most frequently-appearing panellists on Q&A, as of 14 November 2016 (not including the digitally-streamed pilot show) are listed below: