Where did this strange idea come from? The aim is to get a variety of perspectives in order to stimulate lively and entertaining discussion. Bolt/Akerman are the resident palaeo-conservatives but the rest of them cover the spectrum.

With the Bolt/Akerman exception, I doubt that it’s possible to get a clearly delineated left/centre/right breakdown. Perspectives will – and do – vary according to the issue. It’s basically a bunch of journos having a natter rather than an equity exercise in partisan polemic. The viewer – given that it’s on at an ungodly hour on Sunday morning – is presumably expected to form his own conclusions given that he’s obviously an irredeemable political junkie.

I personally think that they should only have Piers on when David Marr is also present. It’s always vintage stuff.

http://justtofun.blogspot.com/2008/06/what-is-krud-kevin-rudd-doing-for.html

In theory, the panelists are meant to be left/center/right. Malcolm Farr, George Megalogenis and Brian Toohey are the typical center people. If you think these guys are “right wing propaganda”, I can only imagine how left of center you must be politically.

On the other hand, when David Marr gets to occupy the center seat, then it’s going to be “lefties beat up on Piers/Andrew day”. Perhaps you think Insiders is right-wing propaganda simply because the right-wing person gets to have a say?

Insiders may have got very stale and uninteresting lately, but right-wing propaganda it is not.

chrisl, your suggestion of left wing influence on The Insiders, if i read you correctly, is absurd. Rudd treats the show with the respect it deserves, by not giving it the time of day.

It is pretty much right wing propaganda and has been since well before the election.

Frankly I’m disappointed that Aunty couldn’t arrange for a much more evenly balanced presentation. Perhaps all the ‘lefty’ journos had better things to do on a long weekend.

Nevertheless in so far as politicians can help us break out of this pattern, governments have much more agenda setting power than oppositions, so it would be nice to see them use it a bit more strategically. I also think it’s more in their interests to do so. (Long term interests that is). Tim Colebatch had an excellent column on this recently.

But why the ABC has to play along with the nonsense is completely beyond me. They’re funded to put on a better show than that.

- Barrie tries to get the guest to respond to something their political opponent has said and/or tries to get them to say something that will kick off the ping-pong game for the week to come.

- The panel watch a clip of one pollie and comment on it, and then they watch a corresponding clip from the other side of the chamber and comment on it.

- Even when pointing out the nonsensical and trivial, the triviality needs to come in point and counter-point form (e.g., this morning it was Peter Garrett with TV energy ratings followed by Greg Hunt skydiving).

At the moment, nobody seems to be willing to rise above this crap – Labor, the Liberals, and the media are equally complicit in driving this inane style of discourse.

Apart from the fact that it means our leaders are sending their time talking about very little, another key problem with this approach of duelling soundbites is that it minimises the role of the minor parties and independents. You can’t fit a third party into the framework unless one of the two major parties refuses to play.