Death to Question Time

I know it's lazy of me but I can't help but plug this wonderful article by Greg Jericho on the ABC Drum website.

Ordure, Mr Speaker, ordure. Let's call the whole thing off

In it is a witty, comprehensive and pretty much incontrovertible elocution of why as a political process of any genuine use "in the national interest", it's bereft of any substance whatsoever. The comparisons with the briefer, sparser but to-the-point UK question time are telling.

The problem of course is that Question Time is pure politics. It is geared so that those inside the Canberra bubble can talk about the issues that they wish to talk about because they think those issues will provide the best grabs in the quick segment of the nightly news that is devoted to what our Government and Opposition are doing.

This leads into the worst impact of the Question Time – namely that media will talk about who won or lost (and I'll admit to have fallen into this trap many a time as well). A Government wins or loses in parliament by whether or not it gets its legislation through – question time has nothing to do with that. But if your leader "does well" in Question Time, the troops feel buoyed, leaderships are secured and so on and so forth…

I will freely admit that this is what makes QT such fun to watch, and why I'll continue to watch it when I can.

But as a key plank of the political process and the main conduit between the Parliament and the public (due to the ABC broadcast), we can do a hell of a lot better than this.