The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's struggle to replace Q+A has defined much of its recent television strategy. After shutting down the long-running panel show last year, the ABC returned to live national debate on Monday night with ABC National Forum, a deliberately recalibrated approach to public discussion that asked an uncomfortable question: can television thrive on civility alone?
Broadcast live from ABC's Ultimo studios in Sydney and moderated by ABC National Political Lead and Insiders host David Speers, the inaugural forum tackled the lives and experiences of Jewish Australians in the wake of last December's Bondi attack. It was a weighty topic deserving careful handling, and the program delivered precisely that.
The format itself signals a decisive break from its predecessor. Where Q+A relied on panel sparring and audience challenge to generate heat, the new initiative is not expected to run as a weekly or seasonal series but will be staged as a special event program when major national issues warrant a dedicated public discussion. This structural choice reflects deliberate editorial philosophy: depth over frequency, substance over spectacle.
On the substance test, National Forum delivered. The discussion moved beyond the predictable talking points that dog public debate on divisive issues. Participants genuinely listened. Experts and community leaders shared perspectives that complicated rather than simplified the questions at stake. There were moments of real human connection, which is precisely what the ABC's news director Justin Stevens promised when he spoke of the program's role as a "town square" for constructive national conversation.
But this raises the harder question: does respectful discussion make for engaging television? The viewing public abandoned Q+A in its final years, despite the program's pedigree and cultural significance. Media experts Andrew Dodd and Matthew Ricketson wrote that panel-based current affairs programming had become "a turn-off for audiences, regardless of whether they're young or old". National Forum takes the opposite approach entirely, removing the adversarial spark that once drew audiences to watch politicians debate.
Whether audiences will embrace civility over conflict remains to be seen. A successful special event program demands genuinely compelling topics and speakers; the wrong choice would expose the format as earnest but dull. The inaugural episode succeeded because the subject matter commanded attention and because Speers managed the conversation with evident skill and sensitivity.
For now, National Forum has cleared a modest but meaningful bar. It proved the ABC can create serious public discussion without descending into performance. The real test will come when the novelty fades and the network must sustain viewer interest across multiple forums on varied topics. If it can do that, it will have achieved something Q+A struggled to maintain: a national conversation people actually want to join.