The Three Most Valuable Moments Of Monday’s Brutally Honest ‘Q&A’

Q&A is always a coin-toss — it’ll either be a quality hour of thought-provoking television or an exercise in purest, deepest brain-masochism. Considering last night’s panel included luminaries like Coalition Senator and climate sceptic Andrew Robb, comedian and Footy Show co-host Dave Hughes and walking lawsuit Derryn Hinch, and that the first ‘question’ of the evening turned out to be some wild-eyed hero yelling about Muslims and “litmus tests,” it looked like it was going to be one of the latter.

But the panel managed to exceed expectations, especially when the discussion turned to depression and substance abuse; issues which Hinch, Hughes and Robb between them have all struggled with to some extent. Besides calling Derryn Hinch a wanker, for which anyone automatically receives an Australian of the Year nomination, Hughes revealed that he gave up drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana when he was 21 because of the detrimental effects they were having on his mental health. He argued forcefully that Australia’s culture of binge drinking makes it tremendously difficult for many people, particularly young men, to engage with drinking in a way they feel comfortable and safe with.

“I don’t drink at all. I think the toughest man at the pub is surrounded by a group of drinkers and says, ‘no, I’ll be right’,” Hughes said, a laudable and important sentiment to hear that will nonetheless result in Hughes being put in a headlock and called a big girl by Sam Newman sometime this week. Hughes was later asked what he thought of religion, which didn’t quite inspire an answer of the same eloquence.

Robb, too, offered up some brutally honest moments about his 43-year long struggle with depression, which saw him take a three-month hiatus from politics in 2009.

“I tried everything,” Robb said. “Someone told me that if you smile or laugh you release endorphins or whatever and you feel better. So for ten years I drove to work with a pen in my mouth because someone told me if your face is configured like you’re smiling your brain thinks you are and it releases endorphins.”

He also encouraged people suffering from depression to seek help, saying that he held off from doing so for decades “because of the stigma attached” and that his turned his life around unimaginably once he sought help. “In my case it was medication that really did the trick and for the last four years I’ve had better days than any days for the 43 years before,” he said.

But it was a ten-year old kid called Ethan who offered the most valuable — and disquieting — contribution of the night, asking via video why the government was deporting an Autistic friend of his, Tyrone, to the Philippines, where his mother came from eight years ago on a skilled working visa. Tyrone and his mother have faced the prospect of deportation ever since the Immigration Department found out Tyrone is autistic, as he may constitute a burden on the Australian health system.

Between them, Robb and former Labor Speaker Anna Burke clarified that the Immigration Minister has discretionary powers to overturn Department regulations in certain cases, and that those powers are often exercised in cases like Tyrone’s, but it’s unclear whether Immigration Minister Peter Dutton will do so this time. Tyrone’s mother Maria Sevilla has been campaigning on behalf of her son for a while; a Change.org petition Sevilla started seven months ago garnered nearly 85,000 signatures before last night’s episode, and has skyrocketed since.

“The government thinks that children with autism are going to be more of a cost to Australian society than a benefit,” Sevilla wrote on the petition. “Tyrone is not a burden, he is a joy…The idea that he can’t contribute because of his condition is just wrong.”

Yes. It takes a 10 year old kid to show up a Kafkaesque immigration department with its stupid rules. #qanda

— Eddy Jokovich (@EddyJokovich) April 20, 2015

Misconceptions about autism are still fairly common in wider society, as Autistic people themselves are happy to tell you, but Immigration’s seeming callousness in ignoring Tyrone’s case shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody — this afternoon news came through that a five-year-old girl with post traumatic stress disorder, depression and severe anxiety is due to be shipped back to Nauru detention centre from Darwin where she is receiving medical care, despite the warnings of multiple psychiatric assessments. The girl has reportedly been exposed to sexualised behaviour, which is unsurprising given an independent review found evidence of multiple cases of rape and sexual assault in the centre. The publicity from Q&A will hopefully pressure Peter Dutton and Immigration into allowing Tyrone to stay, but that doesn’t mean they’re likely to stop deporting other at-risk kids any time soon.