from Crikey .....

Partisan teen becomes conservative idol -- and other Q&A mysteries

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

ABC, ANDREW BOLT, KEVIN RUDD

She's been praised as the "teen who skewered Rudd" in the Telegraph and lionised on conservative blogs. "Meet the student who asked a tougher question of Kevin Rudd than did Left-spruiking Paul Bongiorno this morning on Meet The Press," said Extreme Right-spruiking Andrew Bolt on the weekend.

Eighteen-year-old Angela Samuels asked Rudd on last week's Q&A about his laptop promise, inducing a cranky reaction from the Prime Minister, who looked flat and uninterested while being grilled by students for an hour. She then used the Telegraph interview to accuse Rudd of lying.

"I'm in contact with schools. I know what he's saying isn't the truth. It's annoying that he stands in front of cameras and says things that aren't true."

Hard-hitting stuff from someone from the real world. But absent from the Telegraph's praise was some relevant context: Samuels is a Young Liberal from Brisbane, studying at ANU (and not a schoolgirl, as some media reports initially suggested).

A moment's checking by the Telegraph journalist would have revealed Samuels' background. Her Facebook page (doubtless shortly to be made private) details a long list of conservative causes in which Samuels has been involved: Abbott's Army, Tony Abbott for PM, Mr Rudd, I Want My $300 Billion Back, a climate denialist group and her membership of the Young LNP South Brisbane Group.

In last year's ANU Students Association elections, Samuels stood as part of the Act! Ticket, headed by ACT Young Liberals George Ober and Sam Jackson-Hope.

None of this reflects on Samuels, who has done nothing to hide her partisanship. Yesterday, she commented on her Facebook wall "I Love Tony!!! Hooray for local health boards!" Half her luck for getting a question on Q&A. It hardly invalidates her question to Rudd, and it's entirely his fault that his media persona, on Q&A and elsewhere, is starting to slip apart.

But it does reflect on journalists and reactionary commentators happy to overlook her partisan affiliations in favour of the "fake Rudd brought down by authentic teen" narrative.

It also suggests Q&A is having continuing difficulties getting the balance right between partisan audience members who can deliver controversy, and representatives of the other 98% of the population. Last night's dreadful episode, in which the mouth-watering clash between Lindsay Tanner and Barnaby Joyce was ruined by the presence of three other irrelevant and less-than-exciting guests, seemed to have been allowed by the ABC to be used as a soapbox.

There was a group of ex-ADF personnel running a well-organised email campaign to have their pension benefits boosted, and an apparent supporter of Melinda Tankard-Reist's campaign to censor and regulate everything faintly connected to s-x, who served her up with a Dorothy Dixer that allowed her to range over s-xualisation of children -- including peddling the internet myth that Noah Cyrus is launching a lingerie line for nine-year-olds -- and the recent attacks on Government websites.

Which is all fine if Q&A wants to become a lobby for professional barrow-pushers, but it makes for less-than-compelling television.