I loved confronting the left-wing mob on the Q+A panel. I'll miss it dearly

Sydney Morning Herald

15 hours ago

The irony. After making its name in the heady days of internet cancellations, the ABC's Q+A has finally received a taste of its own medicine. Not for the crime of expressing non-conformist opinions, for which panellists were pursued, but for the crime of becoming so conformist there was no thrill left in switching on the TV. So says the cynic in me. Unsentimentally – but no less acutely – I will miss a show that once inspired Australians to engage with politics and talk about policy as though it were theirs to shape.
Over the past few years I have appeared a number of times on Q+A, hosted by Tony Jones, then Hamish Macdonald and Patricia Karvelas. All of the hosts were unfailingly kind, as were their producers. I have a particular soft spot for Lindsay Olney, a talented senior producer who overcame my view of the show as a firing squad trained on non-progressives and convinced me that it might be OK to go on – just this once. Also for Tony Jones, the host of the first show I appeared on, who sensed my nerves and ensured I was treated with courtesy.
It wasn't these people who eventually killed the ABC talk shows. It was the people whose response to an unfamiliar view is not curiosity, but outrage. The live tweet stream that was the genius stroke for democratising the show unfortunately also encouraged online mob behaviour around each episode.
It could be hard to take. Politicians, especially from the right of politics, learnt to decline invitations to join the show. What was originally an opportunity to include the audience in a discussion became a trap. A word out-of-place or simply misconstrued would be weaponised by partisans and political opponents. When politicians did appear in later times, it was to deliver contrived messages rather than spontaneous answers.
The advice to first-timers going onto Q+A was to lock yourself out of Twitter (and then X) for the week. The comments could be brutal and highly personal. Inevitably they would include threats and sexualised comments from some particularly unhinged netizens. Producers admitted that conservative women were often reluctant to come on because the attacks on them outweighed any possible professional benefit appearing could confer. That makes me angry. So many clever women have been silenced by zealots from the side of politics that claims to champion female empowerment. They were a loss to the viewers of the ABC.
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There was a similar dynamic around The Drum, which stopped screening at the end of 2023. Many on the right were critical of that show as well, for similar reasons. Both Q+A and The Drum tended to invite only one token 'right-winger', who would be there to represent a broad spectrum of ideas against a panel of 'left-wingers'.
They had a point. This one-against-all sense was amplified on Q+A by the live studio audience. It was always supposed to be selected to reflect the spectrum of community opinion, but those who clapped and booed seemed invariably to come from the left of the political spectrum. Yet personally, I relished the set-up. I'm always at my happiest taking on the world and challenging lazy thinking and intellectual orthodoxy. These shows, and even this quirk of balance, was tailor-made for me.
That was my motivation for going on. But the thoughtful feedback I'd receive afterwards showed me there was value in it for others as well. For many viewers, these ABC panel shows were the only exposure they had to non-left ideas. People would write to me, when I'd been on, to say they'd appreciated hearing a perspective they'd never considered. For a year after The Drum was taken off-air, people would stop me in the street or come up to me in shops to say how sad they were that it was no longer screening. I expect with Q+A it'll be the same.