Few will lament last week’s mercy-killing of the ABC’s Q&A program. It had become a grim appointment for third-rate ministers to deliver party lines to a dwindling, ageing audience. But one unlikely person who has a soft spot for the show is opposition leader Sussan Ley’s chief of staff Dean Shachar.

Shachar appeared in the Q&A audience as a chirpy questioner not once, but twice. In 2013, the fresh-faced future politico was called on by Tony Jones to lob a question to Anthony Albanese about Kevin Rudd. A year later, there he was again asking Clive Palmer about his former Liberal allegiances.