Q&A: Malcolm Turnbull shows which side he’s on
Malcolm Turnbull delivered a blunt message to the ABC yesterday over Zaky Mallah’s appearance on Q&A.
In the cult of Malcolm there are few more willing disciples than the producers at the ABC’s Monday night televised talkfest, Q&A.
Whether looking nonchalant in a black leather jacket or wearing a suit, tie on or off depending on ministerial whim, the Communications Minister is Aunty’s go-to-conservative.
The show is among Turnbull’s most favoured platforms; put on the spot, cameras rolling, lights on, he can’t help but answer …
Turnbull was last week working behind the scenes to ensure the government’s changes to the Citizenship Act would not fall foul of the High Court. It was a simple premise — laws have to be constitutional.
Turnbull remains at one with the government’s national security objectives and yesterday rammed home the point when he ripped into the ABC for a “very, very grave error of judgment’’ after it invited “known quantity’’ Zaky Mallah to sit in the Q&A audience.
Mallah, Turnbull told parliament, “served a term of imprisonment for threatening to kill ASIO officers. He had been charged with threatening suicide attacks and preparing for terrorist attacks in that context, although had been acquitted.
“He had travelled to Syria in the pursuit of what he described as jihad. His social media presence is vile, abusive and violent.’’
There was nothing opaque about the subtext — moderates are tough on terrorism too, and on this issue I’m no ABC luvvie.
Parliamentary secretary Steve Ciobo was reading from the same script on Q&Awhen he was confronted by Mallah, telling him: “I’m happy to look you straight in the eye and say that I’d be pleased to be part of the government that would say that you were out of the country.’’
As far as parliamentary performances go, Turnbull can often be the girl with the curl in the Longfellow poem. When he is good, he is very good but when his answers are over-rehearsed and bordering on pantomime it can be horrid.
There was no doubt that yesterday Turnbull was very good.
He spelt out to the ABC just how cavalier they had been with safety in chasing ratings by inviting a potential time-bomb to sit in their audience.
“It beggars belief that he was included in a live audience, whether it is on the basis of what he might say, given his clear track record of intemperate and violent language, but also, just as worryingly, from a physical security point of view.
“Surely we have learned to take threats of this kind, to take people like this, extremely seriously,’’ Turnbull said.
The message was blunt, and even more potent that it was delivered by a minister who could lose a high-profile platform if Tony Abbott goes ahead with a suggested boycott of Coalition appearances on Q&A.
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