The government’s leadership team decided nearly two weeks ago to ban Coalition frontbenchers from Q&A, deputy prime minister Warren Truss has said, raising questions about why Barnaby Joyce thought as late as Sunday that he was free to go on the ABC program.

Tony Abbott spoke to the agriculture minister on Sunday to order him not to proceed with a scheduled appearance on Monday’s program, just hours after Joyce publicly recommitted to attending. Joyce said he took the prime minister’s instruction “on the chin” but “it would have been nice” to have known about it earlier.

But Truss told reporters in Darwin on Tuesday: “The decision was made by the leadership team which includes the prime minister and I and my deputy [Nationals] leader Barnaby Joyce on the last [parliamentary] sitting Thursday [25 June].”



Truss, who is the leader of the Nationals, defined the ban as applying “until serious action is taken by the ABC to ensure the program behaves in a responsible way”. The government’s fury at the national broadcaster flows from the decision to allow former terrorism suspect Zaky Mallah into the live studio audience to ask a question of the panel on 22 June.



Asked why Joyce did not appear aware of the ban when he spoke to the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday morning, Truss said Joyce “maybe … didn’t interpret the decision the way others have”.



“He’s done the right thing, like [parliamentary secretary] Alan Tudge did the previous week and decided not to appear on the program because he couldn’t be assured that the ABC had in fact done anything to improve the way in which the program was put together and delivered to the public,” Truss said.



Joyce told Insiders on Sunday morning that he was planning to go on Q&A because he thought the ABC was “dealing properly now with the issue”.



The ABC board decided last week to give a formal warning to Q&A’s executive producer, Peter McEvoy, for not consulting senior management about the proposal to include Mallah.

The board also commissioned a broader review of Q&A by journalist Ray Martin and former SBS managing director Shaun Brown – which could take months to complete.



Martin entered the public fray on Tuesday by declaring Abbott was “so silly” to ban colleagues from the show pending the review.



In comments that have the potential to undermine the government’s confidence in the review, Martin said: “It’s clearly a political issue at the moment in terms of terror. I think we’ve already started looking towards the next election.”

During a guest-hosting appearance on Seven’s Sunrise program, Martin said he thought everyone agreed it was a mistake to have Mallah live on air, “but the rest, I’m going to wait and see”.

Martin said the review would include an examination of Q&A programs during the previous government. “I suspect that Tony Jones was just as tough on the Labor government as he has been on the Coalition right now but I think a Bex and a good lie down might help,” he said.

Abbott refused to clarify on Tuesday whether the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, was free to go on Q&A next week amid uncertainty about the details of a prime ministerial ban on such appearances.



The prime minister did not take a backward step from his strident criticism of the program for its “unacceptable and indefensible” decision to give a platform to Mallah, who was acquitted in 2005 of two terrorism offences but pleaded guilty to threatening to kill Australian Security Intelligence Organisation officials.

“Malcolm [Turnbull] quite properly has been engaged in ongoing discussions with the ABC about exactly what they’re going to do to ensure that something like this never happens again,” Abbott said on a visit to a supermarket in Sydney on Tuesday.

“Now, there is an internal ABC process under way at the moment. It wasn’t appropriate for a minister [Joyce] to go on there on Monday night and I want that process to be concluded as quickly as possible.”



Abbott brushed off repeated questions about whether he would permit Turnbull to fulfil his commitment to join the panel.



“What I’m not going to do is give further advertisement to a program which was frankly right over the top,” he said. “I’m just not going to give further advertisement to this particular matter.”

Answering questions at a National Press Club luncheon on Monday, Joyce said Abbott had “made an instruction that until the process of the review at the ABC is properly concluded he doesn’t want people from cabinet on Q&A”. That process could take months to complete.

Turnbull – who has previously spoken out against the idea of a government-wide boycott of Q&A – has yet to comment on whether he will press ahead with the scheduled appearance.



The prime minister’s decision drew criticism from panellists on the Q&A program on Monday. They included Greg Sheridan, a senior journalist at the Australian newspaper and a close confidant of the prime minister, who said the government was “now in danger of making itself the issue”.



At the end of Monday night’s program its host, Tony Jones, said the program was “expecting” Turnbull to appear next week as scheduled.



Jones also thanked Buzzfeed Australia for listing the events that lasted less time than “Q&A-gate” including the Cuban missile crisis, which lasted for 13 days, and the political career of rugby league coach Mal Meninga, which, he said, ran for 27 seconds.

Labor’s agriculture spokesman, Joel Fitzgibbon, suggested the “extraordinary” ban was a case of Abbott engaging in “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”.

Alan Tudge, the prime minister’s parliamentary secretary who pulled out of the 29 June episode in the immediate aftermath of the controversy, refused to be drawn on whether the ban was counterproductive and how long it should last.

“I’ll leave that to the prime minister to inform us on that,” Tudge told the ABC’s 7.30 program on Monday.



Abbott elevated the issue two weeks ago by saying that Q&A had become a “lefty lynch mob”, demanding that “heads should roll” over the Mallah issue, and asking the ABC: “Whose side are you on?”

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