Every now and then – usually in election season – we as a nation must labour through an all-politician edition Q&A. We quickly realise that the only thing that brings Q&A into the margins of tolerability is when there is someone who isn’t politician on there.
Last night’s ep featured a veritable smorgasbord of personalities: Richard Di Natale, Terri Butler, Steve Ciobo, Jacqui Lambie and Nick Xenophon. Their goal for the evening was bickering pointlessly with one another on issues only tangentially related to the questions they received. So a normal episode of Q&A, really.
Labor‘s Terri Butler copped criticism for arguing that Greens leader Richard Di Natale should stop conducting himself as if he has a chance of becoming Prime Minister – such as by demanding a place in leaders debates – because he will not be Prime Minister as long as he remains in the Senate.
Di Natale suggested that a Labor/Liberal coalition was a far more likely arrangement than a Greens/Liberal coalition, considering the similarities the two former parties have on issues like offshore detention and coal mining. Butler shot back that it was a “silly thing to say” and that the two parties are “completely different”.
They also bickered over preferences, which is a deeply edifying exchange for viewers to be subjected to:
Meanwhile, Liberal Senator Steve Ciobo just sat back and let the two tear each other apart, basically, jibing them on border protection policy.
All in all, it ended up being a infight among the two centre-left parties over which of them was more right-wing and like the Liberals, which is an extremely exciting and invorigating conversation to have to watch.
31 days to the election, and God knows how many election-themed episodes of Q&A.
