Question Time has been televised for 35 years. We tracked how it has changed, and what it means for Australian democracy
- Written by: Weekend Times
For around an hour each parliamentary sitting day, the prime minister and other ministers face a flurry of questions from the opposition and other members of parliament.
It is often here
that debate on the issues of the day becomes most heated, and such is the interest from media and others that anyone can watch it live.
As such, Question Time serves a vital function in Australian democracy: it is a highly visible way in which, it is hoped, the government can be held to account. It is also a chance for the opposition to present itself as a viable and desirable alternative government.
But critics see it as increasingly flawed.
On one hand, governments can dodge real accountability by giving non-answers or having their own side ask “Dorothy Dixer” questions – that is, a favourable question to the benefit of an MP’s own party.
On the other, the theatrical and combative tone can shift attention towards personal attacks and cheap point-scoring, turning people off politics. Another concern is an increasing trend that political scientists call “personalisation” or “presidentialisation”. This refers to Australian politics becoming dominated by party leaders at the expense of the rest of their team.
Too much scrutiny on leaders can distract from meaningful policy debate and lead to a destabilising “coup culture” of frequent leadership changes. So, 35 years after Question Time first became a televised spectacle, has it really become a heavyweight title fight between party leaders or does it remain an all-in brawl?
Our research, which analysed 21,500 opposition questions asked and answered between 1981 and 2025, reveals a more complicated picture. Opposition questioning has become increasingly concentrated on prime ministers, but opposition Leaders have become less dominant.
What is personalisation and why does it matter?
In Australia and around the democratic world, people have become less committed to political parties. Personalisation refers to the growing prominence of individual political leaders relative to parties and their wider parliamentary teams.
In Question Time, this matters because scrutiny of the prime minister can become a proxy for scrutiny of the government as a whole. Locally, some worry our system of government is coming to resemble that of the United States, becoming too “presidentialised” compared to the apparently more stable Westminster tradition.
Research has shown the repeated leadership changes during the turbulent 2010–18 period harmed public confidence in democracy. Scrutiny of leaders is of course important. But too great a focus on personalities rather than policy detail suits populists and other challengers who would capitalise on people’s dissatisfaction.
In our study, we measured the share of opposition questions directed to each prime minister and the share asked by each opposition leader. We also wanted to see whether Labor and the Coalition acted in the same way.
Finally, we wanted to know whether the changes to party rules that made it harder to remove leaders introduced by Kevin Rudd in 2013 and Scott Morrison in 2018 changed the focus on leaders. We expected these changes would have cemented opposition leaders’ ability to dominate Question Time. Instead, we found a recent decline in leader dominance since the turbulent 2010s.
First, we found that opposition questions had increasingly concentrated on the prime minister, with this trend being evident across parties.
In the early 1980s, approximately 26% of opposition questions were directed to the prime minister. That figure has now doubled, with around half of all opposition questions directed at the prime minister.
At one extreme, prime ministers Abbott, Turnbull and Gillard faced more than 60% of opposition questions. At the other end, prime ministers Fraser and Keating both faced less than 30% of opposition questioning.
But we did not find the same pattern for opposition leaders. Rudd was a clear outlier, asking almost half of all opposition questions, with Dutton at the other extreme, asking less than 15% of opposition questions.
Liberal opposition leaders consistently ask fewer questions than Labor opposition leaders. Part of this is because of a need to share the spotlight with their National Party colleagues. More importantly, both parties have seen a decline in the proportion of questions asked by the opposition leader since the end of the 2000s.
It is not clear whether this reflects rule changes that have made leaders more secure and therefore more willing to share the spotlight, or whether parties have deliberately chosen to give less prominence to leaders such as Bill Shorten and Peter Dutton. Either way, our findings suggest personalisation is not a uniform trend: it impacts parties and leaders differently.
How could Question Time be improved?
Whether a reduced focus on opposition leaders will improve the quality of parliamentary debate is an open question. But parties can adapt to the pressures created by a political system increasingly centred on leaders as well as ideas.
And those adaptations can create problems of their own. The Liberals’ rule change made it difficult to remove a leader who had won an election. This did nothing to help Sussan Ley, and offers no protection for Angus Taylor either.
If leadership instability contributes to perceptions of disunity within the Coalition, it may also have created opportunities for challengers such as One Nation.
While scrutiny of leaders is important, governing is a team sport. In Question Time all ministers should be held accountable, not just the prime minister.
Pandanus Petter receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Daniel Casey and Thiago N. Silva do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
