Q A affair has become theatre of the absurd

Has Q&A put some spell of madness over the government and their media mates?

A straightforward case of the public broadcaster making a mistake (in my view), acknowledging it, and getting a blast from critics has turned into a Coalition and News Corp feeding frenzy that is nothing short of absurd.

In the latest developments on Tuesday:

• Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said the government leadership team decided before parliament rose to boycott Q&A. This group includes Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce, who was however surprised and angry when Tony Abbott told him on Sunday he could not appear on Monday’s program. Joyce was present at the meeting; Truss said that “maybe he hadn’t interpreted the decision the way others had”. Joyce, now not commenting, has been made look bad by both Abbott and his own leader.

• Neither Malcolm Turnbull’s office nor Abbott’s office could or would say whether Turnbull will be a panellist, as scheduled, next week.

• Abbott refused to answer questions on Turnbull’s appearance or non-appearance declaring “what I’m not going to do is give further advertisement to a program which was, frankly, right over the top”.

Could Abbott have been oblivious to the irony? He and the government – together with News Corp – have been giving massive publicity to the program. And they are all going “over the top”. This is an exercise in obsessive behaviour and attempted bullying.

News Corp is driven by ideological and commercial considerations.

Abbott is driven by – what exactly? Deep tribalism: the belief that the ABC is “them” – defined by the Prime Minister’s Office as anyone who is not “us”. A desire to talk up national security on every occasion. A wish to play to those in the backbench and the conservative base who see the ABC as an enemy.

But surely even Abbott sees the ridiculousness of the situation into which he has put himself and the government.

The ABC is on the whole a very respected institution. There is little broad political gain in taking a battering ram to it, although that racks up brownie points with News Corp and some in the Liberal right.

An Essential poll, published on Tuesday, found most people either thought the ABC was not biased to the left or the right (36%) or didn’t have an opinion (40%); 22% believed it biased to the left and 3% to the right. People’s perceptions are correlated with how they vote. This poll comes after sustained pillorying.

Monday’s Q&A had no government representative after Joyce pulled out. Abbott might have hoped his friend Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian, would be a helpful voice. But Sheridan roundly criticised the ban, and also the government’s legislation, which was supported by Labor, that will stifle criticisms from professionals such as doctors working on Nauru and Manus Island.

Abbott is now on sticky fly paper with the ban. If he retreats, it’s embarrassing. If he persists, ministers will be unhappy and the government will stay unrepresented on the program. Turnbull’s position must be clarified soon, unless he is willing to tolerate for days an intolerable personal situation.

Asked how long ministers would not be appearing Truss said, “well, essentially we’re expecting the ABC to demonstrate that it’s learnt from this error of judgement, and that the program will be better run in the future”. Balance was needed in audience and panels and the subject matter should “not essentially be catering to one sector of the audience”.

Obviously the ABC is in a special position in relation to “balance”, because it is the public, taxpayer-funded broadcaster. Privately owned media outlets have the right to be “unbalanced”. But it would be heartening to hear leading figures in the government, just once in a while, speak as though “balance” was a journalistic virtue to be pursued more widely.

Abbott is now impatient for the review of Q&A that the ABC has commissioned from journalist Ray Martin and former SBS managing director Shaun Brown. He linked the quashing of Joyce’s appearance to the inquiry being underway. The review will take quite a while to be finished. If Abbott lifted the ban for Turnbull he would not have the hook of a completed review – so how would he square this with his decision on Joyce? If he insisted Turnbull not appear, this would further worsen relations between them.

On Tuesday, Martin described Abbott’s ban as silly, and observed: “It’s clearly a political issue at the moment in terms of terror. I think we’ve already started looking towards the next election.”

Martin also defended Q&A host Tony Jones. “I suspect that Tony Jones was just as tough on the Labor government as he has been on the Coalition.”

Needless to say, Martin’s comments – ahead of the review – just give more fodder to critics of the ABC.

But like everything else, they help ensure Q&A doesn’t really need promos anymore.

Listen to the latest Politics with Michelle Grattan podcast with guest, Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane, here or on iTunes.

Disclosure

Michelle Grattan broadcasts for ABC Radio National breakfast.