Eric Abetz is at it again.
Senior Liberal Eric Abetz believes the ABC TV political talk show Q&A has failed in its attempt to provide a representative cross-section of the community because the audience was overwhelmingly made up of Labor and Greens voters.
Rather than seeing conspiracy everywhere, has Abetz considered the possibility that Coalition leaning voters have not applied to join the Q&A audience in the same numbers as Greens and Labor voters?
So, the important question for Abetz to ask of the ABC is how many self-identified Coalition voters have applied to participate as a Q&A audience member?
I’m sure the sign up form database would provide him with the answers he’s looking for, though I suspect he may not like what it reveals.
Or is it that Abetz prefers to take a free kick at alleged bias and lack of balance at the ABC rather than a deeper look at what may be a statistical or political (cultural) anomaly?
By the way, I presume he’s been happy with the panel representation to date.
Good to see he’s focusing on the big issues.
This is the same bloke that wants to make our democracy less democratic by making voting non-compulsory because less Labor voters will turn up to vote at a non-compulsory poll.
Senator Abetz is, of course, right. There are more Labor and Green voters in the Q&A audience because more people in Australia voted Green at the last Federal election. If it was a Q&A on state issues in, say, NSW, there would probably be more Liberal voters and in WA it would probably be 50-50.
Because of the peculiarities of the Pineapple party I can’t work out what it would be for Queensland.
A similarly stupid question would be “why are coalition voters less politically engaged, based on their non-desire to appear on Q&A?”
Abetz fails to grasp a fundamental of LNP support – that many lifetime voters for his side do so as an act of contempt and/or detestation for the progressive/blue collar/working class/intellectual members of our society which they feel the Labor Party represents. Voting Conservative for these folk is a default position – NOT to be misinterpreted as a support position.
I’d say most Liberals aren’t passionate about anything – except seeing Labor in opposition.
So it’s no wonder few bother to attend Q&A to cheer on their side, as the antithesis of passion for progressive issues is, at its heart, no passion at all.
But I guess this isn’t the issue for Abetz – he’s just wants to pick up where Aston left off.
Nothing changes.
Bryce, My dear old Nannas two-bob millionaires.
How many Coalition voters are there? Surely not many any more…?
Besides why would any Coalition voters want to appear anywhere near the Communist HQ that is the ABC?
TheEd @ #3 Exactly the sort of remark I was about to type.
BTW Paul @#2, I find Qld Nats, at least in rural areas, very engaged, and have been throughout my voting life; but not Libs.
There was also a “class” thing to voting Liberal, especially among older voters. That the post-war ALP generations educated their kids into the middle class at just that time Liberals & the Vietnam War alienated uni students, seems to have escaped the Blue Rinse Brigade. They did have Gen X there for a while, but Howard’s “No Kyoto”, “No Sorry”, rising HECS, crappy broadband – and the green & gold Trakkie Daks – shifted a significant % in 2007. All of the above, esp uni-debt and Iraq, shifted Gen Y even more effectively that Vietnam shifted their parents, and non-compulsory student unionism did a great job on killing off activism – including Liberal activism (Q Nats from areas with rural universities were “Not Happy John”, as the Nats had worked student activism in their favour). These couple of pieces of Liberal spite may cost them dearly for a generation to come.
Above all, I think there was a significant paradigm shift, evident in the 1990s, that Howard ignored; among its features: generic globalisation, communication revolution, education revolution (inc globalisation of undergrad & higher degrees through Internet, in % attending unis & in the effects on an older generation of “Train the trainer”), bio-sciences and technology revolution, Climate Change … of “mainstreaming ‘Green”.
Since Election07, these features of the paradigm shift dominate the national debate; and, thanks to Howard, Liberals have no alternative policies they can propose and defend. Add to that the financial meltdown – that can in no way be blamed on anything but NeoCon economics – and leadership instability.
If I were a Liberal, I’d be asking, “Is there any aspect of the current political agenda we Liberals feel confident of debating in public?”
And the follow up question, “So what are we doing about it?”
My take on last week’s Q&A was that almost all the audience was made up of Liberal Party people.
Malcolm Turnbull, on a few occasions, referred to them as such and mentioned the emails they all receive from him. He certainly appeared to know a lot of them.
Perhaps the question should be – why was this particular audience allowed to contain so many people from his electorate. It meant that he could appear to be more warmly applauded, the questions could be a bit more ‘fairy flossy’ and the soundbites for the media would be made much of. This indeed happened today on the Insiders.
Eric Abetz – I think the audience should be first in for a ticket gets a seat.
The piece I read in the Age said that average figures for Coalition supporters was 20% of the audience, while average figures for Labor and Green supporters were 50%. It seems there is a gap there… undecided/declined to answer?
I’m not sure why the ABC asked audience members their voting preference. It seems they have shot themselves in the foot.
Spot on, Sue H. I found it distasteful that Turnbull should use schoolchildren so blatantly for Dorothy Dixers. It was hard not to fall about laughing when he talked about his desire for a fair Australia. Fair like in Workchoice? Two things disappointed me about Tony Jones. The first was that he did not take up this point and pin Turnbull down on whether he would introduce such laws if he became Prime Minister. The second was that Jones did not press Turnbull for a yes or no answer on whether he believed all pensioners could survive on the pensions existing at the time Mal Brough proposed a pension rise to Cabinet a little more than a year ago, or when he stated earlier this year that a pension rise was not Coalition policy. Rudd, Gillard and Swann answered the question honestly earlier this year. The measures in the Budget on utility allowances, phone allowances, plus indexation rises have improved the situation for pensioners over what it was in 2007. The Liberals continue to keep trying to score political points over an honest response – Helen Coonan was at it again on Sky on Sunday. It’s about time supine political commentators challenged people like Turnbull, Hockey, Bishop and Coonan to answer the same question, relating it to the situation at the time of the Brough proposals. It’s called balance – a quality sadly lacking in most political commentators.
Andos, I suspect that they ask because of petty harassment by men like Abetz, I also don’t see it as an issue for a show like Q&A.
At times it can be a very political show and does canvass culture war territory so a multiplicity of views is necessary.
As I wrote in the post the ‘request to participate’ form database holds the answer, I think the show went with what they had – they have seats to fill on show night so if the participation request numbers broke that way then they can’t be faulted.
I’ll also mention another aspect here, Abetz and many ABC critics appear to take particular delight in attacking ABC content that becomes popular, it’s almost as if they wish ABC content to fail and see every clever well produced success as a failure of their own world view.
Understanding Abetz’ political orientation I suspect that he also saw last Thursdays Malcolm Turnbull show as another ‘luvvie’ broadcast with the seats occupied by a bunch of Sydney Eastern Suburbs/inner city ‘elites’; unrepresentative of the rest of Australia.
Maybe he thinks the ABC should spend some of it’s budget on an affirmative program for right wing audiences and bus and fly them in from all over the country.
Maybe they should try that? Do a show with just Timmeh and the Bolta as panelists and restrict audience participation to commenters from their blogs. It’d be a scream!
Either that or give those Larouchites from the climate change denialist doco a few years back a ring…
very interesting letter in Crikey on Friday :-
Lloyd Lacey writes: When Rudd fronted the ABC’s very first Q&A program he provided them with a high interest draw card on which to launch the new series with Tony Jones. For the inaugural program, the program producers seated Rudd on a bar-style stool — apparently with his feet not in contact with the ground and the stool unable to move. Rudd was fully exposed to the audience, only able to place his hands in his lap and with no ability to adjust his position. The format was in the classic “hot seat” style. While Rudd seemed to accept this arrangement and participated cheerfully, an objective assessment of a person in this position would recognise the physical discomfort of the position and the potential to boost their emotional stress — and the impression conveyed of a witness under interrogation. There was literally no wriggle room there! The “hot seat” format suggested a robust interview, even a “grilling” — and there would be nothing wrong with that.
However, anticipating that Turnbull would be subjected to the same treatment, and interested to see how he would react, I was surprised to see him in his Q&A appearance last night seated on a chair behind a table — alongside Tony Jones and able to be framed from various angles against deep red, textured backgrounds. Why were both politicians presented so differently — one (Turnbull) comfortably seated and able to adjust his body position and maintain his physical dignity throughout the interview, and the other (Rudd) perched on a fixed stool and presented in the style of an interrogation?
How does this represent either fair or reasonably even-handed treatment of competing political leaders — let alone a Prime Minister, even one prepared to play along for the sake of a program launch? Did Turnbull object to being treated in the same fashion? Was such a set even offered to him by the producers? Or did the producers decide to offer Turnbull something different from that provided to Rudd? If so, why?
Kinda funny to see Abetz complaining about the what is now your Liberal ABC.
Is it only me that needs to look under the beds, in closets and lock the doors every time I hear Abetz’s voice. He wins the most creepy politician award in my book.
They’ll have to move the Q&A studio to Wangarratta or Victor Harbour, as if they have the studio in the most convenient place for all the guests near the CBD of any major state capital, geography dictates that there will be more Labor than Liberal audience members.
Never mind the ABC, does Abetz know how biased is the audience in the Labor Party Room at Parliament House? Since it’s taxpayer funding that provides those facilities, we really oughta see some Coalition supporters placed in there, just to make sure none of them are thinking or saying anything that doesn’t represent all Australians, you understand.
What about how biased the ABC board is, if we are going to go all AA, they have to spill at least half of the board, termination notices should be put out on Janet and Windie, although doing such a thing would give these commentators a undeserved relevance that would allow them to play the victim for a brief second until they have to find the next chimera to fight.
Its a sickeningly sad commentary on the present state of the social-democrats that they can’t finish off this pathetic Tory-party. Whassamatta losers? Can’t get it up?
Abetz wants all ABC current affairs programs to be like ‘The Insiders’ with Akerman, Bolt and Milne as hosts.
“Its a sickeningly sad commentary on the present state of the social-democrats that they can’t finish off this pathetic Tory-party.”
What social-democrats? Not Labor. Maybe there are a few of them within the ranks. The reality is that they are a more moderate version of a neo-liberal, conservative party.
Social Democratic views are represented best by The Greens in Australia, in my opinion.
And I concur with the majority of commenters on this thread. ABC news seems to be overwhelmingly Liberal biased. I’m highly sceptical that there is any bias occuring in Q&A, and think that Abetz ought to back up his statement with evidence or we can assume that it’s more of the usual Liberal Party tactics, slandering whatever they don’t like. As someone else pointed out, Turnbull got a better deal than Rudd on Q&A. Biased in which direction?
Phil: that’s what I thought, but you can’t win with people like Abetz. If the figures showed 80% Coalition supporters, he would find something else to beat the ABC with about so called ‘bias’.
If the sign up form asked you which party you supported, conservatives would not have admitted it as they would have expected the ABC to then refuse them entry. That is how is normally works. Instead groups like the not at all biased Labor front Getup would have been called on for an audience, of Labor members, I mean, the general public.
Maybe the conservatives had better things to do that hang out at the ABC, where as the lefties could claim that as work for their union, or state member, or GetUp.