The battle of the Tonys

source: abc.net.au

Ray Martin has finished his review of the ABC’s discussion show and not a single hair on his head is out of place. This review was instigated by former Australian Prime Minister and dictator wannabe Tony Abbott because his government’s policies actions were questioned.

Ironically the review took nearly as long as Abbott’s Prime Ministership and will probably be longer too.

So what did Australia’s favourite journalist learn from watching every episode, and reading every transcript and tweet, besides that Q&A is not interesting enough to binge watch?

The show is a bit sexist, more men get to be panelists than women. With the Coalition in government and it being a political show this was bound to happen. The Coalition are not known for promoting women to the front bench.

Also for a Sydney produced and filmed live in Sydney, it favours Sydney based people when it comes to the audience. Surprise! What is surprising is its bias towards Sydney-siders when it comes to twitter comments from the general public that are published. Should we all set up fake twitter accounts so that we can participate in one of Australia's most popular hashtags #qanda? Like setting up ghost American account to buy online music at a cheaper rate and another one for downloading movies and television shows. 

Finally Mr Martin discovered that the show was not biased against the government. Another surprise! What he did learn is that the government of the day got more air time to present their policies and initiatives but equally were questioned more about their policies and initiatives. As we learned with the previous Labour governments, being able to explain a policy is critical to success

This makes sense as the Opposition really only has one policy. As their name suggests the Opposition’s policy is to oppose the government. It turns out this was something Abbott was very good at, opposing. Leading was not so much one of his strong suits.

It should be noted that Q&A has proven to be more, more interesting, more informative and more intelligent than Mr Abbott. In the battle of the Tonys (should that be Tonies?) Mr Jones has spent a much longer tenure at the top. 

So what is the answer to the question Australia enjoys being able to debate policy and the tussle between differing ideological opinions, and does not enjoy a government of Prime Minister that will not participate in the conversation.