Bill Shorten’s interview meltdown

Cringe and laugh along as we go through some of the best, or worst interview moments ever seen from Pauline Hanson to Ricky Muir.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten had a disastrous interview on Melbourne radio last week. Source: News Corp Australia

THERE'S nothing like a good car crash interview.

It's not easy being a politician. You have to give so many interviews about so many topics, sometimes you just want to rip out your earpiece and storm off the set.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten had a slow-motion meltdown of his own on Melbourne radio last week, in what was billed as an opportunity to find out, 'Who is Bill Shorten?'

It's a reasonable question. Who is Bill Shorten? What does he believe? Is everybody, in fact, somebody?

Throughout the painful 25-minute interview with the ABC host Jon Faine on Friday, Mr Shorten sounded bored, slightly sleepy, and unable to answer a straight question without falling back on tired cliches and motherhood statements.

Faine was having absolutely none of it, calling the opposition leader out repeatedly for not actually answering his questions. Listeners were less than impressed.

Listen to the whole thing here:

Here are some of our other favourite interview fails:

The government's controversial data retention laws are popular with pretty much no one. ISPs are annoyed at the extra cost the regime will impose, civil libertarians are furious at the blanket invasion of privacy, and media organisations fear the laws will be used to identify journalists' sources. So it would probably help the sales pitch if Attorney-General George Brandis was able to explain what 'metadata' actually is.

Remember when Clive Palmer seemed like a slightly kooky but otherwise harmless dinosaur enthusiast from Queensland? When trying to pinpoint the moment it all began to unravel for the PUP, people will most likely point to Mr Palmer's infamous dummy spit on the ABC's 7:30. The Member for Fairfax wasn't happy about being questioned on certain missing Chinese money which may or may not have been used to fund the party's election campaign. He did it again not long after.

It's $18,200. Eighteen thousand two hundred dollars. The tax-free threshold is $18,200. Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen would have been banging his head against a wall after struggling to name a fairly basic area of his portfolio in a 'robust' interview with 2GB host Alan Jones on Sky News' Richo and Jones program earlier this year. Mr Bowen's attempt the next day at explaining away the brain freeze was unconvincing, to say the least.

Not so much a car crash as a VBIED of an interview. Wassim Doureihi, the spokesman for Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, went head-to-head with Lateline host Emma Alberici last December in a fiery encounter which made headlines as much for what he didn't say. Mr Doureihi, who once told supporters that "even if a thousand bombs went off in this country, all it will prove is that Muslims are angry", dodged and wove when repeatedly asked to denounce the actions of the Islamic State terrorist group.

UK Greens leader Natalie Bennett gave one of the most excruciating political interviews of all time on British radio last month. Quizzed on her party's housing policy by host Nick Ferrari, the Australian-born politician was unable to answer even the most basic of questions — questions such as, "How are you going to pay for it?" – leading to several minutes of "umms", "aahs", coughing fits and awkward silences. It followed this earlier effort, in which she defended people's right to join terrorist organisations such as Islamic State or al-Qaeda.

In 2011, then opposition leader Tony Abbott was questioned by a Channel Seven reporter about comments he had made when discussing the death of Lance Corporal Jared MacKinney in Afghanistan, after footage emerged showing Mr Abbott telling a group of Australian troops that "sometimes shit happens". Rather than answer Mark Riley's questions, Mr Abbott silently nodded in a bizarre 28-second staring competition.

State governments rely massively on the GST. The revenue passed back from the federal government goes towards funding everything from schools and hospitals to paying compensation for not building roads. So it's probably not unreasonable to expect an aspiring premier to name the actual rate of the GST — something Annastacia Palaszczuk was unable to do during the Queensland election campaign.

Motoring Enthusiast Party Senator Ricky Muir was given a crash course in media ethics following an extremely awkward interview with Mike Willesee on Seven's Sunday Night program in June. Mr Muir stumbled over his words as he struggled to answer basic questions about balance of power and the Australian car industry, eventually asking to be excused from the room. Mr Muir, who seems like a genuinely nice guy, later described Seven's conduct in airing the unedited footage as "unethical".

frank.chung@news.com.au

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