Tony Abbott, the Australian prime minister, has escalated his feud with the national broadcaster ABC by banning his cabinet colleagues from appearing on its flagship political discussion program.

The Coalition government’s anger at ABC erupted after the producers of the Q&A program allowed a former terrorism suspect to join the live studio audience in Sydney two weeks ago to ask a question of the panel.

The agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, said he had been forced to cancel a scheduled appearance on Monday’s program after the prime minister instructed cabinet ministers to avoid Q&A until an ABC-commissioned external review was completed.



Coalition MPs have routinely accused ABC of leftwing bias and the government announced cuts to the broadcaster’s public funding last year.



The review is likely to take months, but ABC has already conceded it made an error of judgment in allowing the participation on 22 June of Zaky Mallah, who was convicted of threatening to kill Australian intelligence agency officers. The broadcaster also issued a formal warning to the show’s executive producer, Peter McEvoy, an action that may not have satisfied Abbott, who had suggested that “heads should roll”.



The late cancellation was embarrassing for Joyce, who is deputy leader of the Nationals, the junior partner in the coalition with Abbott’s Liberals. Joyce had said as recently as Sunday morning that he would proceed with the Q&A appearance and gave qualified support to the way the ABC was now handling the Mallah fallout. The prime minister spoke to him late on Sunday.

In comments that appear to suggest a robust conversation, the agriculture minister told the National Press Club it “would have been nice” to have been told earlier about the ban.

He said that while “no threat was made” during the exchange, he felt obliged to obey the directive, likening it to following orders in the army where “an instruction is an instruction and that’s what happens”.

“If you can’t take it on the chin, you’re in the wrong job,” Joyce said on Monday. “I mean, how much do you want to put on the line for a television program?”

Joel Fitzgibbon, who serves as the Labor opposition’s agriculture spokesman, suggested Abbott had another motive for the “extraordinary” ban.

“The Zaky Mallah incident is behind us, the ABC has acknowledged its mistake, it has apologised, it has been subject to an independent inquiry,” Fitzgibbon said.

“Now this is not about Zaky Mallah, this is about the prime minister and his mind games – his mind manipulation and his determination to shut down any debate which he doesn’t believe is in the interests of him and his political party.”

The controversy overshadowed Joyce’s attempts to promote the government’s plan for the agricultural sector, which was released at the weekend.

In a pointed response, ABC’s managing director, Mark Scott, said on Twitter that Abbott’s instruction denied Joyce the opportunity to discuss the agriculture white paper “in front of a million people who watch the show”.

Scott has been involved in a war of words with Abbott over the Q&A controversy. Commercial talk radio hosts and newspapers in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Australia have generally backed the criticism of the ABC.

Two weeks ago, Abbott told colleagues at a joint meeting of the coalition parties at parliament that Q&A – a weekly panel show that often features politicians, prominent experts and activists as guests – had become a “lefty lynch mob”.

The prime minister followed that with a press conference in which he said millions of Australians would “feel betrayed” by the broadcaster’s decision to give a platform to Mallah. Abbott, who has pursued a series of changes to toughen national security laws over the past 12 months, asked the ABC: “Whose side are you on?”

Scott responded by saying the ABC was “on the side of Australia” and he hoped that “no one seriously wants the ABC to be a state broadcaster” like those seen in North Korea, Russia, China and Vietnam.

The communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who has portfolio responsibility for the ABC, was due to attend next week’s Q&A program but had yet to comment on his plans in light of Abbott’s edict. Turnbull is a former Liberal party leader who was deposed by Abbott in 2009. He was tipped by many as a possible replacement for him during leadership speculation earlier this year.