On Monday night's episode, host Tony Jones avoided the necessary acknowledgment he made the previous week of the controversy engulfing the program, dispensing with the absence of boycotting minister Barnaby Joyce with a brief, straightforward explanation: "For those who haven't heard the news, Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce, who was going to be on tonight's panel, was instructed to withdraw from Q&A by the prime minister last night."

And then it was on with business.

For the first half hour, business consisted mostly of a focus on recent events in Greece. It took until beyond the halfway mark for the elephant in the room to rear its head, by way of a questioner who inquired succinctly: "Is democracy in danger when politicians avoid facing questions from citizens in forums such as this?"

Far be it for Tony Jones to say. Indeed, it was a good illustration of the vast difference between commercial television and the ABC that the program avoided both grandstanding and wallowing, instead allowing the debate to take its natural place as just another question among many.

Answers were given. They were universally opposed to the Abbott-ordered boycott, with conservative commentator Greg Sheridan offering: "I do think the government is mistaken not to come on this show. The ABC made a mistake … everyone I think recognises that. The government is now in danger of making the sympathy flow against it, making itself the issue.

"All it needed to do was say, 'You've been very naughty, the ABC, we're very disappointed in you' and let community sentiment express itself and move on."

Right-of-centre panellist Trisha Jha summed it up best: "You've got to be in it to win it."

The Greens Larissa Waters and Labor's Richard Marles had their say, and that by and large was that. Jones declared that debate, mercifully, closed: "OK, let's stop talking about ourselves."

That may be wishful thinking, of course - what with Q&A favourite and government gadfly Malcolm Turnbull booked and still promoted as a guest for next week's show. But even if Turnbull follows Joyce as a no-show under prime ministerial edict, we were reminded on Monday night that in the absence of a frontbencher, the government can potentially rely on a member of the Opposition to show up and do its work for it.

This week that task fell to shadow immigration spokesman Marles, who seemed so discombobulated by the absence of a direct political foe that he spent most of the program defending government legislation and policy. In one of the oddest of Q&A outings, he found himself at odds with both the Greens panelist and the two nominal conservatives on the panel as he tied himself in knots defending the recent Border Force Act and suggesting Labor would follow, holus bolus, current policy on boat turnbacks.

He didn't quite put it like that, instead repeating variations on his chosen asylum-seeker talking point - "We're not about to re-open this journey" - and trying to bat off Jones's attempts to pin him down, to the point where someone needed to summon the referee to save Marles from himself.

Marles: "You've invited me to go down a hypothetical there."

Jones: "No, I'm just asking you for a straight answer."

He wasn't going to get it. On the Border Force Act and its penalties for whistleblowing by medical staff, Marles let slip the most telling line of the night: "It shouldn't be me who's coming out here and defending this." Alas, Mr Marles, that's what happens when people can't tell the difference between the government and the opposition and one side doesn't turn up for the debate.

Q&A ended with a joke, quite a relief after the hand-wringing contortions of the previous fortnight.

Tony Jones gave a shout-out to the website Buzzfeed and its recent listings of "the many, many things" that had lasted less time than what Jones called "Q&Agate" - the Apollo 11 space mission, the Cuban missile crisis, and Mal Meninga's 27-second political career.

Can Q&Agate run another week? Whatever Malcolm Turnbull decides, you can bet on it.