Whoever produced last night’s Q&A on ABC TV should be sacked.
The program was appalling — the panel a disgrace, the audience boring and overall the hour long “debate” on the monarchy versus the republic got absolutely nowhere. It was one of the worse shows produced by the ABC in its history.
Bronwyn Bishop’s daughter Angela – an entertainment reporter on Channel 10 for God’s sake – was almost silent and when she did comment she reduced banality to its lowest common denominator.
Nick Minchin was tired and disinterested. As one of the architects of John Howard’s rigged “referendum” there was so much he could have said. He opted out.
Amanda Vanstone, usually good for one liners, didn’t fire up any more than Marcia Langton did.
The Aboriginal academic, usually so brilliant and on top of things was sidetracked by “dream time” references which were somehow hard to fathom.
Bob Carr was at his academic best and wiped the floor with his opponents, but Bob has lost the fire in the belly.
In a moment of sanity the Melbourne academic Aron Paul was pulled off the panel and replaced by The Chaser’s, Craig Reucassel who was the best by far contributor.
Young, intelligent, incisive and humorless, he almost saved the program but the odds were stacked against him.
Aron Paul wears David Flint-like coloured glasses and couldn’t see past the majesty of the monarch which of course isn’t there any longer.
Edwina Throsby told me she had been “brought in” to selected the panel —well in future she should be left at home.
Where was Malcolm Turnbull or Paul Keating?
[Watch last night's Q & A on the ABC website.]
Or for that matter, ARM chair Michael Keating.Where was David Flint?
Why wasn’t my offer to be on the panel accepted?
Was Greg Barns’ name considered?
Last night, the ABC had a golden opportunity to get the debate on our constitution going again.
It failed miserably.
The audience failed.
David Donovan’s video question on behalf of the ARM wasn’t shown. In fact, no video questions were shown. Indeed, not one viewer question saw the light of day.
For God’s sake, one woman was allowed to draw comparisons between Hitler, Mugabe and the like to the installation of an Australian to the top job.
The Golden moment was a clip from The Chasers banned segment, which illustrated just how bad the whole programme was.
I’d have hated to have been in Tony Jones’ place — even he wasn’t able to rescue the disaster, which was of Titanic proportions.
Shame ABC, shame.
