Culture

Lawrence Krauss Captured Just How Stupid The Zaky Mallah Debate Has Become On ‘Q&A’ Last Night

Nothing more exciting than Q&A talking about itself.

by Alex McKinnon  30 June 2015

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The Zaky Mallah/ABC controversy has stuck around like a bad smell for a full week now, kicked along by the government accusing the broadcaster of “betrayal” and Liberal politicians proclaiming a boycott of Q&A, to the devastation of the millions of souls aching to hear Kevin Andrews’ views on anything.

With the ABC’s Ultimo studios in high-security mode and actual, crazy far-right protesters doing awful things outside ABC offices in Melbourne, host Tony Jones began last night’s episode by trying to clear the air, taking collective responsibility for Mallah’s appearance on behalf of the Q&A production team and claiming Mallah wouldn’t have been given a platform if they’d known about the vile misogynist tweets he sent out earlier this year.

Due to some late pull-outs from conservative pollies and commentators, Australian columnist Paul Kelly was drafted at short notice, prompting a split-second of quickly-crushed hopes from everyone who assumed “Paul Kelly” referred to the singer and not the sentient pile of dust. As was to be expected from a guy who nodded his way through Rupert Murdoch’s astoundingly weird views on climate change, Kelly went after the ABC with all the vigour an 1800-year-old man can muster, lambasting the ABC for giving “a platform” to Mallah and accusing them of pursuing “a gotcha moment” by letting him on the show.

Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson echoed Kelly’s sentiments, saying that the ABC “should be ashamed” of themselves, and made a pretty decent point about how Q&A has gravitated more towards sensationalism and Twitter-baiting instead of reasoned and serious discussion in recent years. In case anyone started thinking that Tim Wilson was about to start making valuable contributions to said discussions, though, he also argued that deporting someone wouldn’t constitute depriving them of freedom of speech, presumably because Q&A‘s next special will be held in the middle of the Syrian desert.

So far, so predictable — it’s not an episode of Q&A unless some token conservative is railing against the ABC’s existence while everyone else sits in steadily growing impatience. But the best moments of the show usually come when some hugely intelligent, charming, polite, articulate foreign intellectual gets invited on the panel and spends the first half-hour smiling bemusedly while Australian politicians froth over whatever nontroversy has the talkback radio switchboards lighting up that week, before eventually being invited to chime in and blowing everyone away.

So it was last night with Professor Lawrence Krauss, one of the world’s foremost authorities on physics, cosmology and the need for scientific and rationalist awareness. Krauss was baffled by the massive response last week’s episode got, describing it as “ridiculous” and calling it “something from nothing,” while pointing out that Q&A has objectionable people on it all the time — as it should — and no one bats an eye. It was a refreshing and welcome take from someone outside the hysterical ant colony that is Australian public debate, and a reminder that no matter what we’re het up about this week, it probably doesn’t matter nearly as much as we think it does.

Which brought the discussion back to what got us into this mess — the government’s use of fear to facilitate the stripping away of rights and legal precedents in the name of “national security,” and the unintended consequences of such behaviour at home and abroad. Krauss expressed dismay at the climate of fear and suspicion surrounding the national security debate in Australia, suggesting it may be being played up for political ends, while founder of People Against Violent Extremism and fellow reasonable-person-on-the-panel Anne Azza Aly pointed out that for all the talk about young people being radicalised we seem alarmingly uninterested in figuring out why it might be happening in the first place, and that government responses like citizenship-stripping often play right into ISIS’ hands.

Incidentally, the government’s ABC-bashing and boycotting led to the fourth-highest rated Q&A ever; a beacon of hope for intelligent and civilised public discourse in Australia that was quickly squashed by the news that next week’s episode will feature Piers Akerman and Barnaby Joyce. HOORAY. Johnny Depp will be furious.

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Read our interview with Lawrence Krauss here.