Return of ABC’s panel show is dominated by discussion of Australia’s resettlement deal with the US and Trump administration’s climate change policy

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The politicking around refugees following Donald Trump’s travel ban was given a human face on ABC’s returning Q&A program on Monday with personal and probing questions from two Syrian refugees.

After two panellists expressed support for Trump’s move to limit migration from seven predominantly Muslim countries, audience member Omar Al Kassab told his story and asked why the panellists would want to ban him from resettling in their country.

“During the Arab spring, when marching for freedom and democracy, I was shot and tortured by the Syrian regime, and forced to flee with family,” Al Kassab said.

ABC Q&A (@QandA) Why would someone ban people like us from being citizens of its country? @herandrews & @XiuhtezcatlM respond #QandA pic.twitter.com/JLxgnDiRPf

“Australia has kindly given us a new life and after only two years of learning English, my brother has recently made the news when graduating as a dux of his school and currently studying to be a doctor. I am also halfway through my business degree. Why would someone ban people like us from being citizens of this country?”

After measured responses from the federal energy and environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, and the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, the journalist Daisy Cousens gave a blunt opinion.

“The thing about immigration is that it has tended to be sentimentalised over the last little while,” she said. “That is fair enough. It is an uncomfortable issue.”

ABC Q&A (@QandA) .@DaisyCousens believes it is not a racist ban & troublemakers ruin it for everyone. She thinks resettling in the ME is cheaper #QandA pic.twitter.com/s0kOauzCKJ

But she said people affected by the ban were linked to terrorism. “I knew a girl, a dancer, who lost her leg. She lost her leg because of these people,” she said.

“That is not a racist thing … This is not to do with race or religion. This is to do with radical Islamic terror, which is the political ideology associated with Islam,” Cousens said.

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An audience member, Johanna Edmond, suggested the Australian government should be embarrassed, since it had painted asylum seekers as security threats for years but now needed to convince Trump the refugees on Manus Island and Nauru were not threats to the US.

“Doesn’t it make you blush to now have to admit in arguing with Donald Trump that these people are, in fact, legitimately pursuing fleeing for their safety and have been properly cleared as not security threats?” Edmond asked.

ABC Q&A (@QandA) .@JoshFrydenberg: Are you embarrassed to argue to the US that our refugees are not security risks? @DanielAndrewsMP also responds #QandA pic.twitter.com/HpoBdzaIFi

“Also, if they are safe to go to the US, which we believe they are, why can’t we bring them here?”

Frydenberg said the refugees had not gone through the kind of vetting that would satisfy the US, and repeated the government’s position that unauthorised arrivals by boat would not be allowed to settle in Australia. Andrews responded by saying Victoria took more refugees than would be expected, based on its population size.

The panel also moved through climate and energy issues. Frydenberg argued that Trump appeared to be “open minded” about renewable energy, to which host Tony Jones interjected: “Your own chief scientist Alan Finkel today compared Donald Trump to the Soviet dictator Stalin.”

“He says that under the new president science is literally under attack. This is the same climate science this underpins Australia’s climate policy. Are you at all concerned ... about what the chief scientist is saying?”

Frydenberg restated the government’s push for coal-fired power stations. “We have got our targets and what we are saying is we need to be technology-neutral,” he said.

“For us, it is not just about reducing emissions, I have to say. First and foremost our priority is about energy security because we got a wake-up call,” he said, referring to the blackout in South Australia last year.

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Helen Andrews, a political analyst who was billed as a Trump supporter, used the opportunity to launch an attack on “climate alarmism” by drawing on a widely discredited article in the Daily Mail.

“Based on the NOAA [US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] whistleblower that went public just this week, that revealed that the so-called ‘pause-buster’ paper under Obama was based on flawed data and flawed models, it sounds like they are the enemies of science and not Donald Trump.”

ABC Q&A (@QandA) Do you think the young people of Australia should be suing our government? @XiuhtezcatlM responds #QandA pic.twitter.com/bZazFvpR4B

Also on the panel was the 16-year-old US climate activist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez. “If you look at Australia you could be 100% renewable energy, it is possible,” Martinez said.

“We don’t have to drill for it or dig into the ground for dead plant and animal matter. That is not the future of energy. That is not the future of our country or the world that we should be passing onto future generations. Young people in the future deserve healthy, clean atmosphere where we can breathe the air and drink the water.”