Train wreck TV: Q&A features worst panellist in show's history

Congratulations, Teena McQueen!

And thank you Q&A, for providing on Monday night what will likely be the greatest televised train wreck of 2019.

The wreckage landed complete with the most enthusiastic and oblivious performance ever seen on a program widely loved for its enthusiastic and oblivious performances. McQueen, we dip our hat: you outdid everyone, over 11 years of people trying their hardest. Congratulations!

And to think this all came courtesy of a representative of the Liberal Party - its federal deputy president, no less - who had apparently been sent to the program to show its best face to the nation.

Whoopsie! Come on down, McQueen.

What were you thinking, for example, when you decided to run headlong into a wall and take on the leadership credentials of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern - the present toast of the world - and suggest she was simply cribbing from former Australian prime minister John Howard?

To wit, when offered the opportunity to credit the gun-law crackdown post-Christchurch by the New Zealand PM, McQueen simply sniffed: “We did that years ago. The Liberal Party did that years ago with John Howard.”

The audience, well primed by then to either laugh or cry at McQueen’s answers, let loose some laughter.

McQueen: “You think that's funny? John Howard did do that. Jacinda Ardern is copying exactly…”

The crowd groaned.

“OK,” McQueen said, heroically yet with a spicy note of complete madness.

“Can I also remind you, Jacinda Ardern is only there because she formed an alliance with Winston Peters? I think everyone forgets that little fact.”

Host Tony Jones: “What about the general point - I think that Jacinda Ardern handled it in a certain way and that other politicians in Australia - including our leaders - handled it in a different way? Do you agree with that?”

McQueen: “I think it happened in Jacinda's country. I mean, naturally she's going to be closer to it and more connected to it.”

She went on. Not to praise Ardern, but to defend Scott Morrison - and to note that the Australian gunman “spent a number of years overseas”.

Hooray!

Labor’s Tony Burke took a deep breath to fully capture the free kicks McQueen was serving up.

Burke: “I don't think anyone can understate how effective Jacinda was … in providing the words that the whole world needed to hear. It was an extraordinary act of leadership, and I think to compare any of our politicians to that, they're all going to come up short. I think that's reality.”

This was not the worst, or best, of the Teena McQueen show. Her performance embraced the hour in which she had to embrace her moment, and she was never to be deterred.

On the question of the character of Donald Trump, she helpfully invoked having been present with him at a beauty pageant.

“Tony, I’m possibly the only person here that's actually spent time with Trump.”

Teena for the win!

“In 2006, I was a chaperone for Miss Australia’s entrant in the Miss Universe contest when Trump was still running that … I had a great time [talking] to him about politics. He always said he intended to run for president. He was none of those things - he was not racist, not sexist, none of those things.”

Author Roxane Gay on Q&A.Credit: ABC

Then things took a turn, as if a turn was possible.

Panellist and author Roxane Gay: “Just because you didn't have an experience with him doesn't mean he hasn't done these terrible things. I mean, there's audio of him talking about grabbing a woman by the pussy.”

McQueen: "I just made a joke about a cock earlier on, I don't think there's much difference there.”

Gay: “A joke about a cock, versus grabbing a woman, talking about sexual assault, are two very different things.”

She made a joke about a cock? Yes she did! Before the show, and then the viewer was left wondering if it could get any worse. It could.

Jones: “We should note for the audience your joke was off-camera - you've now brought it into the public debate.”

And later, from Jones: “Teena, the question went to the implications for the federal election. We saw the Prime Minister on Saturday night - I said earlier ‘cock-a-hoop’, which means very excited - not the way you took it. Not the way you imagined the term, but anyway, leave that aside.”

And so there we were. Cock jokes ahoy.

But there was no need for the double entendre when you had McQueen on the panel. She didn’t say anything that wasn’t very clear, or very pleasant.

On top of it all came the channelling of a certain Andrew Bolt, who this week wrote a column suggesting the Greens leader Richard Di Natale was partly responsible for the Christchurch massacre.

Wondered Bolt in print: “The massacre of Muslims in Christchurch by a white Australian racist should make the Greens ask themselves: do they have blood on their hands?”

McQueen - having decried of the Greens “the vomit that comes out of their mouths” - said: “The worst hate speech I've heard recently is Richard Di Natale. I mean, he comes out with absolutely disgraceful things. He's incited violence against the likes of Andrew Bolt. And Milo Yiannopoulos.”

And for good measure, on Mark Latham’s election to the NSW upper house as a One Nation member: “There's no racism, bigotry or anything. They simply voted for someone that is very pro-coal.”

Jones: “Good to see you embrace a former Labor leader in such a …”

McQueen: “I’m not embracing, I'm stating why he received the vote, Tony.”

Jones: “Sorry, that was meant to be light-hearted.”

McQueen: “It wasn't light-hearted. Little bit touchy at the moment, Tony. Careful.”

Touchy?

Teena, you were simply the best, and the worst, beating a decade of Q&A competition.