Last nights Q&A on the ABC was brilliant, even more so when combined with Twitter! The video is already available on the site, transcripts to come!
On twitter, the top trends for a while was people commenting on the show by including a hash tag "#qanda" in the tweets.
The range of guests was interesting, Julie Bishop, deputy opposition leader; Craig Emerson, Minister for Small Business; David Marr, journalist; and Cindy Pan, doctor and author; and of course PJ O'Rourke.
The discussion was wide ranging and once again, a right wing female liberal politician came off looking second best. Julie Bishop, like Rachel Fry, national president of the Young Liberals, was intelligently shot down by both David Marr and also PJ O'Rourke.
A few of my selected highlights were
- David Marr shooting down Julie Bishops attack on the Rudds Handouts @ 19:30, nicely broken by the Hamster comment from PJ.
- David Marr saying that opposition was good for Julie, because it gave her time to think
- PJ's passionate comments about refugees actually being good for a country rather than a burden
At one point some tweeted about PJ O'Rourke being the kinda of right winger than they thought (or was scared that) Malcolm Turnbull might be.
What was refreshing last night was watching some of the panellists thinking and talking, rather than falling back on blind belief. Personally I hate blind belief, we all have brains, we should all use them.
Even with religion, I personally view it more as an approach rather than a belief. When approached in that fashion, religion can be a very strong and powerful force for good. The moment you take your brain out of the equation and fall back on blind belief, things start to go wrong.
A little aside, but I am rambling, during the American Election, I remember watching CNN and the live twittering and when Obama was talking about health care, I tweeted something and someone commented back along the lines of, "so if they pay for our health care, should they pay for our food too?"
It reminded me of how lucky we are in Australia, far from perfect, but getting there!
So after you watch QandA, there's a good article over on the Huffington Post as well, Why I'm Not Now and Have Never Been the Democrats' "Rush Limbaugh"
