ABC moves Q&A to news division, but not until the end of the year

 Extract from The Guardian

Board decides it will accede to the government’s condition for allowing ministers to appear on the program again, following the Zaky Mallah affair

Q&A host Tony Jones ruled comments by Zaky Mallah out of order during the contentious show. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP

Amanda Meade

Thursday 6 August 2015 17.44 AEST 

The ABC board has decided to move its Q&A program out of television into the news division, potentially paving the way for ministers to return to the Monday night talk show.
However, as the move may not take place until next year it is unclear when Tony Abbott might allow his ministers back on the show. Last month Abbott wrote to the ABC saying he would lift the ban on ministers going on Q&A if the show was moved to the news and current affairs division.

“In your letter to me you indicate that transferring Q&A to the news division ‘has merit’,” Abbott said to chairman Jim Spigelman. “Frontbenchers look forward to resuming their participation on Q&A once this moves take place.”
However, the ABC said the move depended on many factors including accommodation, staffing and scheduling and may not take place until 2016.
Q&A dominated the headlines for three weeks after former terrorism suspect Zaky Mallah was chosen to ask a question and later made some provocative remarks which host Tony Jones ruled out of order.
There was some resistance at board level to making the change because of the political pressure exerted on the broadcaster by the prime minister, who privately called the show a “lefty lynch mob” and demanded that “heads should roll” after Mallah’s appearance.
On Thursday the ABC was at pains to portray the move as the decision of the board and not one forced on them by government.
In a statement the board pointed to factors in its decision making including an update on the independent review being undertaken by Shaun Brown and Ray Martin and a briefing “separately by management on the editorial processes surrounding the program”.
It said: “Based on the information provided, the board considers both the program and the wider ABC would benefit by an orderly shift of Q&A into the ABC news division. Q&A is a significant feature in Australia’s news and current affairs cycle.”
“Such relocation should provide the program with greater operational and cultural alignment.”
“Timing of the move will be determined by management in light of accommodation, scheduling, staffing and other factors. The change will take effect no later than the 2016 broadcast year.”
But the day before the board meeting there was a leak in a News Corp paper that said the ABC board was “likely to sign off the shift of flagship panel program Q&A to the more rigorously demanding news section” and that Coalition MPs would return to the program “as soon as Monday”.
In the same article the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, was quoted saying the ABC board had a lot of power and “can appoint people, they can sack people, it can lay down the policies which the management must follow”.
The program’s move out of the TV division into the news and current affairs division means it will be subjected to the same rules as programs such as 7.30 and Four Corners which have to “upwardly refer” contentious matters.
The decision has been made months ahead of the completion of a board-ordered review by Brown and Martin.
The two men will review the first 23 episodes of Q&A broadcast this year, and may make even more substantial recommendations before the show is moved.

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The Worker

ABC Board you cracked under political pressure from Tony Abbott, how weak is that! 

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