Q&A recap: One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts' embarrassing clash with physicist Brian Cox

In searching for a moral from the story of Monday's Q&A - and the debut of a One Nation senator earning rave reviews for his revival of Queensland's finest vaudevillian traditions - let's tap the history books: the lesson of the Queen and the farting corgi.

As legend has it, Gough Whitlam once found himself in an audience with the Queen and also a corgi - in one telling the corgi had only three legs - and the hound in question interrupted matters of state with an extended, toxic fart.

"That was obviously the corgi," ventured Gough.

"Who else?" replied the Queen.

One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts denies the existence of climate change.Credit: ABC

Vis a vis Q&A and the new Australian parliament, just who is the farting three-legged dog in this scenario, you ask? Never fear, it's not you. But the point of the story is that in the vicinity of a whiffy corgi, it's entirely possible you might be blamed for his sins. And like the Queen, it is important to emphasise your innocence.

Which brings us to Q&A debutante Malcolm Roberts, whose bursts of intellectual wind are often of the kind that make you want to move away in a hurry while shouting loudly at the world: "It wasn't us! It was him!", to which the world will nod sympathetically and say, "Who else?"

That's the hope anyway; but what if they don't and instead start looking at us like we're all barmy?

The question arose repeatedly on Q&A as Roberts delivered us the national embarrassment of rock star physicist Brian Cox having to put his eyes back in their sockets over and again as Roberts threw one conspiracy theory at him after another. When eyes weren't popping, they were rolling. Other panellists were aghast. Even host Tony Jones felt moved to clarify things in stark terms.

Physicist Brian Cox, centre, does his best to explain why climate change is a reality on Q&A as Linda Burney, left, and host Tony Jones look on.Credit: ABC

Jones: "You are hearing the interpretation of a highly qualified scientist and you're saying, "'I don't believe that' - is that right?"

It was.

Q&A host Tony Jones. The top concern for TV Tonight viewers is ensuring ABC and SBS remain independent of government influence. Credit: ABC

Cox worked valiantly to keep the bogus at bay, though he said early on: "I could sit here until I'm blue in the face" - and he wasn't wrong. "I brought the graph," Cox offered, a graph which Roberts confidently dismissed to the physicist with the confidence of a taxi driver telling Roger Federer what's wrong with his backhand.

It was hard, as an Australian, not to be embarrassed. Which prompted another thought: that once upon a time, making the eyes of visiting eminent persons pop in amazement was a task we outsourced to a comedian. It was his job to barrel through excruciating public encounters wearing his ignorance on his sleeve and making his guest think: "Did he really just say that?"

We were all in on the gag. Now, it's members of parliament on national TV playing it straight. And you know what that means, Australia?

We've elected Norman Gunston to the Senate.

How did it come to this? We're not a nation of complete nongs. We're a nation who made a hero, across several generations of children, of a physicist who's trademark line was a four-word advertisement for science.

"Why is it so?" Julius Sumner Miller would ask, and we relied on science to provide the answer. Even Mrs Marsh tapped the boffin in us, with her chalk dipped in dye celebrating the benefits of fluoride. "It does get in!" said the kids, believing the evidence of their own eyes.

Oh no it doesn't, would be Malcolm Roberts' reply, perhaps with a triumphant assertion that teeth aren't made of chalk. And to the question "Why is it so?", he might reply, as he did on Q&A: it's a NASA stitch-up.

Roberts: "First of all, that the data has been corrupted and we know…"

Cox: "What do you mean by 'corrupted'? What do you mean?"

Roberts: "Been manipulated…"

Cox: "By who?"

Roberts: "By NASA."

Cox: "NASA?!"

The audience erupted in laughter, as Cox pressed: "This is quite serious" - before Jones tried to restore decorum.

"We have to hear what is being said here," Jones admonished. "It is all very well to laugh but we have to hear what is being said."

Actually, it was hearing what was said that was the problem, as panellist Lily Serna, a mathematician, noted: "First of all, I cannot believe we're having this conversation." Discussing the scientific consensus on climate change, she told Roberts: "You don't ask your architect to read your medical charts just as you don't ask your accountant to perform surgery on you."

You had to admire her optimism that he was going to agree. Roberts is of classic Queensland stock, persistent and unpersuadable and partial to making mischief in the upper house. History's most famous senator was Caligula's horse, and while Queensland did not take that example literally - what a waste of a horse - it absorbed the spirit. Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen sent his wife Lady Flo there, and in 1974 used the chamber to make Whitlam's life a misery. And once and again, Queensland delivered us of Pauline Hanson. Where once reigned Kingaroy's queen of pumpkin scones came Ipswich's whizz with potato scallops.

And now comes Malcolm Roberts - a man whose most winning feature is perhaps having tried to get out of paying the carbon tax in an affidavit - replete with wingnut punctuation - in which his repeated use of the formal appendage "the living soul" makes him sound like the James Brown of the One Nation set. He's certainly hell bent on making a racket. And he will say entertaining things like "I talked to Pauline" and "I am a human being" by way of explaining his thought processes.

But we will do well to remember the three-legged corgi - and to follow the example of Linda Burney, who is the unvarnished terrific election story this year as the first Aboriginal woman elected to the House of Reps.

She said many worthwhile things on Q&A, but saved the most pertinent for last.

"Oh, be quiet!"

She laughed, and so did Roberts on the receiving end, but it was Burney's air of bafflement at Roberts' every word that showed the way. It's an Atticus Finch rule: look at a man "like he's a three-legged chicken or a square egg" and people will start to see what you're seeing.

To end, a suggestion to Q&A: may we ask the next time Senator Roberts is in the house you also invite a Mr Kevin Rudd to share the panel? It would be the ultimate Queensland experiment - "I Believe I Should Run Earth" versus "I Believe in a Flat Earth."

The question for Queensland: why is it so?