Q And A

There’s a hilarious saga going on over an empty chair on tonight’s Q and A panel.

The ABC last week booked ALP powerbroker Mark Arbib for tonight’s show, but this evening Julia Gillard’s office pulled the NSW Senator from the show, and offered up backbencher David Bradbury instead.

The Q and A producers politely but indignantly told the PM’s office to bugger off. In the grand scheme of things it’s worth remembering it’s just a TV show, but in the absence of any concrete details out of Canberra tonight it’s set off a bit of a storm.

Continue reading "The empty chair missing its faceless man" »

As these things go, Julia Gillard’s appearance on Q&A was pretty much a slam dunk. 

She looked prime ministerial. She was poised, witty, and showed a command of a range of policy. Importantly, Gillard steered clear of excessively negative attacks on Coalition leader Tony Abbott who, when he appears on the show next week, will need to change his tone from his campaign launch themes of assassination, toxicity, waste and immaturity.

The Q&A performance showed (again) that Gillard is at her best when she’s off the leash, as she was in her press conference the day after that cabinet leak about her querying the paid parental leave scheme. The forum gave her space to outline her plans for government and she handled well some curly questions on mental health spending and her own family status. She also spoke for all Australians when she inferred that Mark Latham was a tool of immeasurable proportions.

Continue reading "Campaign countdown: Julia gets her groove back" »

Update 12.35pm: Stephen Fielding has just told The Punch that he was mistaken when he claimed on Q&A that Kevin Rudd did not believe in evolution. A number of commenters have attacked the PM below off the back of Fielding’s claims but the Senator says: “I made a mistake. I thought I had read it somewhere but obviously I didn’t, I apologise to the Prime Minister for the mistake.”

We now know courtesy of Monday’s excellent episode of Q&A that when Stephen Fielding and Kevin Rudd first met the PM pulled a Bible out of his top pocket and gave an impromptu sermon. It’s not clear which passage Rudd read although we can presume it wasn’t Ezekiel 25:17 - “I will strike you down with great vengeance and furious anger and you will know then that I am the Lord” - tempting as it may have been for the PM to pass the ETS by popping a cap in the Christian Senator’s ass.

I am not a violent person either but there was something about the creeping Jesus quality of Monday night’s show that had me wanting to kick a hole in the plasma, wondering angrily whether anyone can remember the French Revolution and the quaint conviction that the Church is over there, the State is over here, and never the twain shall meet.

Continue reading "For God’s sake, can our MPs just stick to their day jobs" »

It’s fairly clear to anyone who watched Kevin Rudd on the ABC’s Q & A this week that a group of young Australians very succinctly exposed the shallowness and symbolism that underpins much of Labor’s “policy” argument. 

These young people displayed a healthy scepticism and an ability to see through polly-speak that many of our national journalists could learn a thing or two from. Indeed, in the aftermath, some journalists seem almost shocked by Rudd’s inability to clearly answer a question which isn’t scripted and for which he has not been briefed. 

(Despite the embarrassing prelude of the “Ask the PM” Sunrise questions, which saw Rudd floundering.)

Continue reading "Hollowmen and shallow decisions" »