From The Oz. These are five questions the ABC refuses to answer:

1 – Did Q&A approach Zaky Mallah to join the show’s audience, or did he approach Q&A?
2 – Were the Q&A team aware of the general nature of the question that Zaky Mallah was going to ask?
3 – Did the ABC pay for Zaky Mallah to appear on Q&A?
4 – Did the ABC pay for his transport or travel to the program?
5 – Can you please release the correspondence between Mallah and the ABC.

I assume that the first two are a yes, the ABC did approach him and knew in general what he was going to ask. Tony Jones was completely primed for it. But the third and fourth are the kinds of things that would never cross my mind as real possibilities. The correspondence therefore has to come out.

The odd thing is that this was a genuine public service, the way it revealed a state of mind amongst some of our fellow citizens. It has been a quite edifying bit of television. The only problem is that the outcome was not the ABC’s intent but quite the reverse. The aim was to embarrass the government but has done only damage to itself. The last straw, one hopes, but at the very least it is the next-to-last straw. If the ABC cannot see how hideous it has become from the way this was plotted and designed, they really are an organisation beyond redemption.