The special post-budget episode of Q&A, featuring education minister Simon Birmingham, demonstrated the absurd lengths to which the government and media will go to suppress any critical voice or opinion – especially those that point out the class war nature of this latest federal budget.

For that, I had my participation in the audience revoked. But not even pat-downs and metal detectors managed to keep out angry student voices. (If only they had opinion detectors!)

Along with a group of friends, I had applied to be in the audience, hoping to ask Birmingham some questions about his proposed 7.5 percent fee increase and $2.8 billion funding cut to universities.

It’s not very hard to get into the Q&A audience – its regular Sydney studio seats about 250, and for this special live broadcast from the Gold Coast there were 750 spots. We spent the weekend drafting our questions. The National Union of Students organised a protest outside the studio to make sure the minister would hear our message regardless.

But then something extraordinary happened. My friend and I, who had applied together, both received menacing phone calls from one of the show’s producers. They were no doubt anticipating an in-studio embarrassment à la the famous 2014 student protest against then education minister Christopher Pyne.

My friend told me she was “read the riot act, basically”, and instructed not to “try anything” because there would be lots of police and security on hand. She would not be allowed a bag or phone while in the audience and would have to report beforehand to the producers.

The show’s producers had obviously done some intense detective work because they had found and gone through my Facebook profile, despite the fact I don’t use my real name on Facebook. They told me they knew who I was, that I was an education activist.

Sensing that they had overstepped a mark when I asked them if Q&A was against people’s democratic right to protest, my interrogator gave a nervous laugh and assured me that they in fact love protesting – “just not on national TV”. Right, just not where it would be most justified and effective.

Ultimately, however, they decided it was better to cut us from the audience.

Of course, in the end they could not keep every uni student mad-as-hell at the government’s proposals out of the audience. Some excellent questions were asked from the floor, and then, as if they had just thrown a shoe at the US president, the two students who got up and challenged Birmingham after he failed to answer adequately any of the questions were briskly carried out the back and “put in the van” (someone tell First Dog on the Moon).

I might not have gotten into the studio, but I did join the dozens of students outside whose protest was covered by media across the country.

Q&A producers can spend as much time as they like trawling Facebook to ferret out students who they think might upset Tony Jones. But they won’t succeed in shutting us up.