Flying shoes, a viral BLM speech and that leather jacket: Q+A's most memorable moments

The Guardian

a day ago

After 18 years, the national broadcasters flagship program, Q+A, is dead.
ABC confirmed the axing on Wednesday, a day after staff were warned of cuts.
The ABC's news director, Justin Stevens, said it was time for the broadcaster to 'rethink how audiences want to interact and to evolve how we can engage with the public to include as many Australians as possible in national conversations'.
The weekly discussion program was launched in 2007 by executive producer Peter McEvoy and host Tony Jones, and in its early years was highly influential, regularly making headlines and setting the news agenda.
Let's reflect on some of its most memorable moments.
Actor Meyne Wyatt's powerful monologue, in June 2020 at the height of global Black Lives Matter protests, recounted his experiences across the spectrum of racism – from micro-aggressions to outright hatred.
'Silence is violence. Complacency is complicity. I don't want to be quiet. I don't want to be humble. I don't want to sit down,' so part of his speech, pulled from his semi-autobiographical play, City of Gold, went.
It racked up more than three million views, and saw him included on 2021's Time100 Next list of emerging leaders.
'It was last minute; George Floyd had died, #BlackLivesMatter was at its height. Q+A wanted to focus on the treatment of Aboriginal people here,' Meyne told Guardian Australia in 2022. 'I was aware I was representing – I had to bring it.'
An audience member hurled his shoes at John Howard, the former prime minister who signed Australia up to the Iraq war, after demanding he defend his decision to send 2,000 troops to support the US-led 2003 invasion.
'That's for the Iraqi dead!' Peter Gray shouted as he flung the shoes during a 2010 episode of the program. Gray was then escorted from the studio.
Howard had a close relationship with George W Bush and Australia was one of the first countries to commit troops to Bush's 'coalition of the willing'.
'I thought it was justified,' Howard said during the broadcast. 'I think there were errors made after the military operation ended. I think there were too few troops and I think a mistake was made in disbanding the Iraqi army. But I will continue to defend … the original decision on the basis on which it was taken.'
At that point, Gray stood up and threw his shoes – mimicking the shoe-throwing protest against Bush in Baghdad in 2009.
A criminologist and former detective in the audience lectured politicians in 2024 for failing women and putting politics above the reality of deaths caused by domestic violence.
'How dare you! How dare you go into politics, in an environment like this, when one woman is murdered every four days, and all you … can do is immediately talk about politics? That is just disgraceful,' Vincent Hurley said to federal senators Murray Watt and Bridget McKenzie, and NSW opposition leader Mark Speakman.
'For God's sake, how long do we have to listen to politicians like you … high-horsing about?
'I went to 20 domestics in one night when I was in the police. I held a 10-year-old child in my arms who died from the stabbing from her father … You don't need a royal commission. That money needs to go into frontline services – now.'
The clip, shared on ABC's social media went viral, garnering millions of views.
Germaine Greer's 2012 crack about former prime minister Julia Gillard is infamous.
Greer was responding to an audience question about Gillard's image. She initially defended the first female prime minister as an administrator who got things done, then went on to say: 'What I want her to do is get rid of those bloody jackets! … They don't fit … You've got a big arse, Julia. Get over it.'
In a later interview with Channel Nine, Gillard said the incident made her feel 'sorry' for Greer. From 'being the feminist for our times, to end up talking like that for cheap laughs about another woman was a really sad thing,' Gillard said in 2014.
Q+A became the most complained about ABC program of 2023, with a single November episode on the war in Gaza receiving almost 1,000 complaints, most of which accused the show of pro-Israel bias.
That episode was particularly sensitive, host Patricia Karvelas had said at the start, and was recorded without a live studio audience, and with heavy police presence outside.
The tense episode featured Labor MP Tim Watts, former ambassador to Israel Dave Sharma, Israel & Jewish Affairs Council chair, Mark Leibler, Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president, Nasser Mashni, and UN special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese.
After the program, Albanese told Crikey the standard of Australia's media discourse was 'very basic'.
Many viewers accused Karvelas on social media of not questioning members of the panel – especially Mashni and Albanese – fairly, or giving them equal time to speak. An investigation by the ABC's ombudsman said the episode presented highly polarising views in a fair and balanced way.
The program as a whole received 2,100 complaints in 2023, according to ABC's ombudsman.
Audience member Duncan Storrar laid out his situation in 2016: 'You're gonna lift the tax-free threshold for rich people. If you lift my tax-free threshold, that changes my life. That means that I get to say to my little girls, 'Daddy's not broke this weekend. We can go to the pictures'.'
His question to then assistant treasurer Kelly O'Dwyer continued: 'I've got a disability and a low education, that means I've spent my whole life working for minimum wage … Rich people don't even notice their tax-free threshold lift.
'Why don't I get it? Why do they get it?'
The part-time truck driver then became the focus of savage media coverage, particularly in the Newscorp press.
ABC broadcaster Jon Faine grilled the outlet on its 'value system'.
Many rallied online in support of Storrar, who thanked them, but told ABC's Media Watch, 'I didn't want this'.
National director of lobby group GetUp!, Simon Sheikh, lost consciousness live on air in 2012.
He slumped over the desk, before sitting back up after a few seconds and being helped off stage. He later posted that he was in hospital.
Labor's climate change minister at the time, Greg Combet, rushed over to help. Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella, sitting right next to Sheikh, looked on in surprise and was criticised on social media for her reaction.
GetUp! urged people to stop criticising her. 'It was an extraordinary circumstance and everyone was shocked,' the group said in a statement shared online.
Mirabella said later: 'I thought initially he was just bent over laughing, because that's what you see, and turned around to try and get a better look and I – like everyone else on the panel – was just stunned.'
Yassmin Abdel-Magied and Jacqui Lambie clashed in 2017, after the Tasmanian senator said all Muslims who supported sharia law should be deported from Australia, in a Trump-style ban.
The author and Youth Without Borders founder responded that she was frustrated by uninformed comments about Islam, and that people were 'willing to completely negate any of my rights as a human being, a woman, as a person with agency simply because they have an idea about what my faith is about'.
Lambie said: 'There is one law in this country and it is the Australian law … it is not sharia law, not in this country. Not in my day.'
To which Abdel-Magied protested: 'You don't know anything about my religion,' adding that Islam specified the precedence of 'the law of the land that you are on'.
Then-host Tony Jones had to intervene: 'Can I say, shouting at each other does not help. So please stop.'
Lambie told Abdel-Magied to 'stop playing the victim. Your ban got lifted, get over it.'
Abdel-Magied later wrote about the furious public response to her comments, describing herself as 'the most publicly hated Muslim in Australia'.
A pro-Putin member of the audience was dramatically booted out of the studio in 2022 by then host Stan Grant after he asked a pro-Russia question.
The audience member asked: 'As someone who comes from the Russian community here in Australia, I've been pretty outraged by the narrative created by our media depicting the Ukraine as 'the good guy' and Russia as 'the bad guy'.'
'Believe it or not, there are a lot of Russians here and around the world that support what Putin is doing in the Ukraine, myself included. Since 2014, the Ukrainian government together with Nazi groups like the Azov Battalion have besieged the Russian populations in the Donbas killing an estimated 13,000 people according to the United Nations,' he went on, prompting shouts of 'lies' from the audience.
'My question is: where was your outpouring of grief and concern for those thousands of mostly Russians?'
Grant corrected the figures, noting the UN figure referred to the number of people killed in the conflict on both sides to date, and after a brief discussion the program moved on to other issues.
But a few minutes later, he brought the conversation back: 'Something has been bothering me, I have to admit … people here have been talking about family who are suffering and people who are dying. You supported what's happening, hearing that people are dying. Can I just say – I'm just not comfortable with you being here. Could you please leave?'
The audience applauded, as the audience member initially resisted, then left the studio. Grant said the question was not vetted by producers.
The pro-Russian audience member said it was 'not true' the question was unvetted, but that he had made an 'addition' when asking it.
Malcolm Turnbull's famous leather jacket made frequent appearances with the former prime minister on the Q+A panel.
When Turnbull appeared on Q+A without the jacket, it made headlines.
He later auctioned it for charity on eBay and raised $1,800 for Sydney's Wayside Chapel.