Oz PM lifts ban on disallowing MPs to appear on ABC Television

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has lifted the ban on disallowing government MPs to appear on popular current affairs show ABC Television.

According to the BBC, Abbott had imposed the ban after Zaky Mallah, a convicted criminal and former terror suspect appeared on a programme of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Mallah, one of the audiences of the live broadcast, had questioned a member of the government about tough new citizenship laws, and accused the government of encouraging Australian Muslims "to leave and go to Syria and join the Islamic state".

Abbott, who had then questioned the ABC's allegiance to Australia over the whole affair, lifted the ban after the ABC's board moved the show to the ABC's more rigorous news division.

The public broadcaster, funded by taxpayers but editorially independent of the government agreed to Abbott's demands to shift the show from its TV division into news.

The shift to news will not come into effect until 2016, but Abbott confirmed of lifting the ban "straight away" now that the ABC had "guaranteed" it would make the change.