"Tony Abbott scares me when he attacks the ABC and tries to control what we see on it. Should we all be afraid of his attacks on Q&A and [the] ABC, both things I love?" Ashton Platt said he is scared by Tony Abbott's response to Zaky Mallah Credit:ABC Alarm bells tend to ring whenever a child appears on live television, particularly in the (somewhat) adult domain of Q&A. The widespread assumption is that youngsters are used as cute-bait, voicing the thoughts their parents have scripted. The reaction largely fell along partisan lines. Conservatives and cynics assumed the question was scripted and many accused the ABC of engaging in a stunt to fire back at Tony Abbott, who has ordered his frontbenchers not to appear on Q&A until certain demands are met.

Others shelved their scepticism and complimented Ashton on his apparent intelligence and bravery. For its part, the studio audience broke out in rapturous applause immediately after the phrase "Tony Abbott scares me", before the question had even been posed. There were others who were simply concerned about Ashton's future, joking that the 10-year-old might find himself stripped of his citizenship at the hands of the federal government's new powers.

Q&A host Tony Jones has enjoyed some more subdued episodes since Zaky Mallah and 'Q&Agate'. Credit:ABC Speaking to Fairfax Media on Tuesday, Ashton's mother Suzi said the Platt family - including her 14-year-old daughter - were involved in writing the question. She and her daughter had been in the Q&A studio audience a few weeks before Zaky Mallah's appearance sparked the ongoing controversy, and the family regularly watched the program, she said. "We're a very politically aware family and we like debates. That's something that we encourage with our children – to have independent minds and think for themselves," Ms Platt said.

Zaky Mallah on the ABC's Q&A program three weeks ago. "It astounds me that people think that kids don't think. They think very heavily - my kids do at least." Ms Platt said the family were not involved in any political parties and had no committed political persuasion. She said the question had originally been aimed at Malcolm Turnbull, but when his scheduled appearance was cancelled, the ABC requested they resubmit the video to make it more broadly targeted at the whole panel. Ashton's father Paul was also interviewed by 3AW's Neil Mitchell on Tuesday. He told the program his son had been "a huge supporter of Tony Abbott" until recently. "We find that quite interesting because of all the negative media," Mr Platt said. "As a family we tend to watch predominantly the ABC and the SBS."

The present culture war over Q&A began when Mallah - a former terror suspect who was convicted of threatening to kill ASIO officers - asked a question from the program's studio audience on June 22, more than three weeks ago. Former Liberal leader John Hewson said he was "staggered" the controversy had lasted that long. The ABC had made several mistakes and the board had a responsibility to address the issue, he said. But Mr Abbott had also gone "over the top" when he said that "heads should roll". "The first law of digging holes is when you get to the bottom, you stop digging," Dr Hewson said. "You're still digging. I think we should draw a line in the sand." Australian journalist Michael Ware, who has spent much of his career reporting on the Iraq war from Baghdad, said that Mallah's appearance on the program was useful in exposing a wider audience to the views of people who were or had been susceptible to extremism. "If we don't have people like Zaky Mallah on a show like this, that's quite responsibly run and is quite a sophisticated forum, then when are we going to hear their voices?" he said, to murmurs of agreement from the audience.

"We need to understand these people. Zaky Mallah - give that man enough rope and he'll verbally hang himself, and I think he did that." Ware agreed with other panellists that the subsequent rigmarole over Q&A had been an overreaction. "There's been hyperbole and ridiculous extremism on both sides," he said.