Insiders host David Speers will front a new town hall-style program called ABC National Forum, less than a year after the broadcaster axed its previous discussion show Q+A after successive years of audience decline.
The new program will air in March, and will place citizens, community leaders, experts and policymakers together on a panel to discuss topical issues of national importance, the broadcaster said in a statement.
The first episode will focus on issues arising from the Bondi massacre on December 14 and the lives and experiences of Jewish Australians.
Unlike Q+A, National Forum will not air episodes in a regular slot, instead running as specials, and will focus on everyday Australians rather than politicians. The ABC is yet to decide how often the show will go to air, this masthead was told.
Speers will host the show in front of a live audience in Sydney. He has hosted Insiders since joining the broadcaster from Sky News in 2019, and was made national political lead in 2024. He is regularly the face of the major political coverage on the ABC, such as hosting the federal election leaders’ debate in 2025.
Host Tony Jones fronted Q+A from its inception in 2008 to 2019, followed by a period of instability, with six permanent hosts in the six years after his retirement. Speers was part of a trio of hosts who fronted Q+A in 2021 after the short-lived appointment of Hamish Macdonald. Patricia Karvelas was the show’s final host when it was retired in 2025.
The new show will feature experts asking a panel of individuals about their experiences, as opposed to audience members taking on public figures, a source with knowledge of the program but not authorised to speak publicly said.
Similar topics such as immigration or deaths in custody could be considered for future forums, the source said, likening the show to SBS’s Insight, rather than a copycat of Q+A.
ABC managing director Hugh Marks said the program would bring the public together.
“That responsibility is at the core of our role as the national public broadcaster, and we’re proud to continue investing in content and services that serve and connect our community,” Marks said.
Forum-style shows have had a recent resurgence on social platforms, where personal, partisan opinions are clipped up and highly sharable. A YouTube channel of panel shows called Jubilee, which features broadcasts such as “1 Conservative vs 25 LGBTQ+ Activists” and “1 Progressive vs 25 Far-right Conservatives”, has become hugely popular.
Jubilee has close to 11 million subscribers on YouTube and millions more on TikTok and Instagram, where short clips from episodes can reach tens of millions of users.
The ABC’s new program will not take Jubilee’s combative approach, but could use a similar method of distributing viral moments.
The broadcaster must continue to innovate the concept of the “town square”, ABC News boss Justin Stevens said, with National Forum a result of that, seeking to bring together voices of Australians from across the country in a constructive way.
“Listening to one another is essential to strengthening social harmony and fostering a more cohesive nation,” Stevens said.
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Calum Jaspan is a media writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Melbourne. Reach him securely on Signal @calumjaspan.10Connect via X or email.