Our leaders need more Q & A in the real world

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The important questions were asked at the Rooty Hill RSL, not Aunty's cosy chamber.

SO this is the Q&A election. Julia Gillard appeared on ABC1's Q&A last week, smiling her way through the obligatory soft-ball questions about gay marriage, indigenous rights and the rights of the mentally ill.

Then it was Tony Abbott's turn this week, batting away questions about broadband and global warming. But, with apologies to our public broadcaster, the most compelling Q&A happens when we cut out the middle man, the media. Let's break it to them gently.

The election is not about them. Elections are about voters. And when 200 undecided voters probed our leaders at the Rooty Hill RSL last Wednesday, they asked intelligent, challenging questions. Call it Q&A in the Real World. No comedians dressed up as Kevin Rudd here.

No interest in the ghost of Mark Latham. No limelight-snatching commentary from the television host. As a contrast to the highly orchestrated, tightly scripted election campaigns that have so comprehensively hijacked much of the media, Q&A in the Real World takes us back to old-style town hall meetings and what democracy should be about.

It was amusing to listen to immediate complaints that the audience at Rooty Hill was anti-Labor and gave the poor Prime Minister an unfair grilling.

Regular audience bias in that other universe -- Aunty's Q&A in Sydney's Ultimo -- rarely rates a mention. If Gillard copped a hard time from the men and women in the safe Labor seat of Chifley, she might be in trouble on Saturday.

Middle Australia doesn't need Kerry O'Brien, Tony Jones or analysis from 24-hour news channels to ask the new PM to explain why she executed the former PM when she had a ringside seat in a government that had, according to her, "lost its way".

Quite rightly, people wanted to know whether the ringleaders of the coup, men such as Bill Shorten and Mark Arbib, will be promoted in a re-elected Labor government.

Quite rightly, people were curious as to whether Gillard would, when the polls turn against her, be the next scalp for the factional heads who determine the leadership. The people of western Sydney want to know why this poisonous political culture in NSW should be allowed to creep into Canberra.

Election campaigns are dominated by long-winded questions, apparently clever analysis and endless chatter among political insiders, not to mention the terribly boring, carefully staged election debates run by the same political pundits.

No wonder most Australians tune out. In fact, for every Australian highly engaged with politics, another two Australians don't give a toss. According to research by communications academic, Sally Young, between 12 per cent and 17 per cent of Australians say they're so bored by politics, they would prefer not to vote.

We slam elections as too orchestrated, too tightly scripted, so little substance, so much spin.

The media blames politicians. Politicians blame the media. And we quite rightly blame both of them for the vacuous state of our polity.

But maybe we should also look closer to home. If it's true that we get the governments we deserve, then it follows that we get the election campaigns we deserve.

Given widespread voter ennui, it's no wonder that political parties focus all their energy, particularly during an election campaign, on the made-for-TV news sound bite. And here's where things get even more depressing.

Analysing prime-time TV news stories, Young found that the average election news story lasts for only two minutes, and the reporter and news host speak for more than half the time, leaving politicians to speak in seven-second sound bites. And political campaign launches? Forget it.

When John Howard delivered a speech for 42 minutes at the 2007 Liberal election launch, voters listening to the evening news would have caught just 10.4 seconds of that speech. And that that was probably too much. Ditto Gillard on Monday.

If voters demand more from our politicians -- more Q&As in the real world -- maybe they'd get it. Wanting to keep everything in the election bubble, Gillard and the machine men of Labor want another boring debate -- this time about the economy -- in this final week of the election campaign. Abbott has finally agreed. He had little choice. It sure is a sad day when the Liberal Party walks away from a debate about the economy. What must Howard and Peter Costello have been thinking when Abbott was running away from debating the economy?

That said, Abbott is right to point to the Australian people, rather than political pundits, as the focus. He should have stuck to his guns and told the Labor strategists that if there is to be a debate about the economy, let the people ask the questions.

The media doesn't have a monopoly on intelligent, penetrating questions. Earlier this year, The Australian Financial Review's Geoffrey Barker predicted we would enter "the era of bogan politics for a bogan nation". Barker should spend more time at Rooty Hill.

You can bet voters would ask whether Gillard, as part of Rudd's inner sanctum, ever questioned the waste and mismanagement of the insulation program, or the green loans program, or the wider stimulus spending.

They'd ask why Gillard, the architect of the mismanaged school buildings program, assumes she is capable of running a trillion-dollar economy. And they'd ask plenty more, because with the power of incumbency also comes some baggage.

Voters don't need the narcissism and hypocrisy of Latham prancing around the campaign pretending to be the disgruntled voice of middle Australia, picking up a tidy sum for his travels.

They don't need Latham to point out that his former mates in the Labor Party deliver the sort of "spin that would make Warney proud". Latham's 60 Minutes story about the lack of substance in politics sunk without a trace because Latham's solution lacks substance.

When he urged voters to cast the "ultimate protest vote" by handing in a blank ballot paper, he encouraged voters to disengage from the political process. He wasn't saying that in 2004. Voters need to re-engage in politics rather than do the Latham dummy spit.

Howard once said that the real title deeds of Australian democracy are a robust parliamentary system, an independent and incorruptible judiciary and a free and sceptical press. It helps, too, if people are engaged more in our democracy.

Come the next election, we should demand more community-led Q&A evenings, one in every state and territory. If our leaders really want to be PM, let them sweat it out a little more in the real world.

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