The ABC’s Q&A program was playing its own version of musical chairs on Monday as two guests pulled out over the Zaky Mallah controversy.
Paul Kelly, editor at large of the Australian, was hurriedly drafted on to the panel after Menzies Research Centre director Nick Cater and Tony Abbott’s parliamentary secretary Alan Tudge pulled out.
The pair snubbed the program as the government continued its criticism of the decision to give Mallah, a former terrorism suspect, a platform on last week’s program.
In a letter to Q&A, Cater, a columnist and former editor at the Weekend Australian, blamed the ABC’s failure to apologise unequivocally for his decision.
“Given that the ABC has failed to apologise unequivocally for giving an open microphone to a convicted criminal and terrorist sympathiser on last week’s Q&A, I will no longer be participating in tonight’s program,” the Australian reported.
“The Menzies Research Centre is a public policy think tank, not a political player. The reputation of our ongoing public policy research must be protected.”
As well as Kelly, the lineup for Monday’s program now includes Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek, the theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, human rights commissioner Tim Wilson and counter-terrorism expert Anne-Azza Aly.
Wilson said if he were a private citizen he would also have withdrawn from the show.
“But as an independent statutory officer, I feel obliged to present and explain what free speech actually is,” he said.
Wilson declined to comment directly on the decision of other panellists to withdraw.
The ABC submitted its response to the government’s urgent inquiry on Q&A to the Department of Communications over the weekend and a report will be handed to the minister Malcolm Turnbull on Tuesday.
Turnbull, speaking in Melbourne, supported Tudge’s decision.
“Q&A approached me and asked if I’d go on and I declined also,” Mr Turnbull told reporters. “This is not a question of a boycott but we are essentially undertaking a fact-finding mission.”
He said MPs would appear on ABC programs again after he had received a report on last Monday’s controversial Q&A show.
Tudge rejected suggestions the government was “frothing at the mouth” with outrage in an interview with Sky News on Monday.
“It is not frothing at the mouth outrage,” Tudge said. “This is a deep concern about the decisions which the ABC has made to put this individual live on their program and give him a national platform.”
Writing in the Australian, Tudge said: “This is not a matter of free speech, as Scott pretends. Free speech means a person is legally allowed to express views. It does not mean that those views must be magnified with taxpayer assistance.”
Staff at News Corp have been urged to “resist pressure” to attack the ABC’s journalists, by the staff-elected director of the ABC Board Matt Peacock.
Peacock said ABC staff were distressed by the portrayal of them in News Corp newspapers as traitors and one journalist had even been abused in the street. News Corp owns The Australian, the Herald-Sun, the Daily Telegraph and the Courier-Mail among more than 100 papers across Australia.
“This is the direct result of an inflammatory campaign against the national public broadcaster directed by people who have a duty to show better leadership,” Peacock said in a note to staff on Monday afternoon.
“Many staff have been distressed by the accusation of ‘betrayal’, the inappropriate call that ‘heads must roll’ and barrage of recent offensive headlines and fake pictures featuring ABC staff providing makeup for Isis terrorists and the ABC logo on an Isis flag.”
Peacock praised ABC’s managing director Mark Scott’s defence of the broadcaster’s independence from political interference.
“I urge staff to stand strong in the face of such intimidation and to maintain our statutory commitment to fearless, impartial and independent coverage,” Peacock, a senior journalist on 7.30, said.
“I also urge my colleagues at News Corporation to resist pressure to mount unfair and provocative attacks on their fellow journalists. Hopefully the current security lockdown of ABC sites will soon be lifted and the inflammatory language end.”
