Someone from the new media sphere might be nice, Miriam, if you’re in a dobbing in mood!

I think they’re consciously trying to get beyond the usual talent pool, which is where people like me come in.

Which is good! But not where Andrew Bolt comes in I don’t think!

WHEN IS KEVIN RUDD GOING TO GET RID OF HOWARD’S RWDBS ON THE ABC BOARD. AND WHY DOESN’T HE HURRY UP ABOUT IT?

Good question. Actually beside the Bolta Stephen Conroy and Helen Coonan will be also on next week. That could be a question that could be asked, considering that de-politicising the ABC and make it similar to the BBC is Government policy.

I will actually ask about the soccer national team games being placed on the anti-siphoning list, considering that Conroy is also a soccer fan

That’s exactly how I view it in regards to Roxon and the “there’s a message in it for us”. Rudd set that off and really it’s the way to go politically. I doubt Roxon believes it too. It wouldn’t be a great look if after Gippsland Rudd came out and said “Nah, who cares?”. Anything close to that and the MSM would comprehensively lose their minds with this “yeah but WE didn’t want you in power” government.

Bolt will be on next week but I was under the impression Q&A wasn’t a comedy?

But then I thought that even if she may not believe it, to dismiss it would be risking to be seen as arrogant and hubris so she may decided to go for ‘there is a message for us’ line. But again good on that audience member to challenge it.

I am a big fan of Julia Zemiro (the hottest bilingual woman on the planet IMHO) but she was a bit of a fish out of water really, and so was the Chaser guy the week before. It is difficult to be amongst experts and politicians that all they do is think and debate about issues all the time and try to give a light slant on things. Although Julia said one of the most intelligent things when she was on. When asked why the Rudd government was seen as being in trouble I think she said something ‘Pfff…they have been in government for just seven months, let’s give them a go’.

I some ways not having a ‘comedian’ is better. Anyway Bolt will provide the entertainment next week.

I think with a health minister and shadow minister, and so many health questions from the audience, it was inevitable that Joe and Nicola dominated the debate last night. On the one hand I agree that it’s better to hear more from the new voices on the panel, but on the other hand it’s great that random punters can put their questions to a minister on the spot. Possibly it needs more than one program - or one hour - to capture the best of both.

As a serial panelist, I certainly found it hard to adjust to a one-hour timeslot. I’m used to two-hour gigs where there’s more time to tease out the subtleties of the issues rather than just spit out a few quick grabs. There’s a lot more I would have liked to get into with Joe - personally I’d like to see the Liberal party reinvent themselves along the lines of the Liberal Democrats, who are a genuinely economically and socially liberal party, but I think they’ll find it hard as long as their base is still captured by wingnuts.

Tony Jones tries in a limited way to even things out, but at the risk of incurring the wrath of certain members of the Board needs to tell the likes of Hockey to shut up sometimes.

The Paul Toohey ‘Quarterly Essay’ makes this point also. Even Brough et al found themselves having to give support to small outstations in some of the NT contexts, if only temporarily, because sending people to some of the larger communities (like Port Keats) meant sending them to potentially very dangerous situations.