It was a battle of statistics on the ABC's Q&A on Monday night, with the panellists unleashing a data dump to rival the Shenhua mine's earthmoving monsters.

The zero-sum game the ABC's panel show seemed to be playing with the Abbott government in the weeks following Zaky Mallah's controversial appearance gave way to quick-fire rounds of percentage points and dollar sums.

The episode was dominated by the massive Shenhua open-cut coal mine planned for NSW's Liverpool Plains - prime agricultural ground for crunching numbers. Discussion about wind farms, politician allowances and tax reform kept the dollar signs and percentage points flying.

It was to be expected after Alan Jones was announced as one of the panelists on this week's show.

Armed with his familiar dossier of facts and figures, the radio commentator was the undisputed winner in the stats stakes on volume alone.

Bet Jones has got statistics on shark attacks in that pile too #qanda— Lisa Greenough (@LisaGreenough) July 20, 2015

The dollar figures were set loose early by Jones, as he shirked a question regarding the House Speaker Bronwyn Bishop's use of taxpayer funds to pay for a helicopter from Melbourne to Geelong.

Consulting his pile of papers, Jones rattled off a litany of charges racked up by Labor frontbencher Tony Burke, and various speakers of the house. Though he did call "the notion of going" from Tullamarine to Geelong in a helicopter "bloody ridiculous".

"I think in all of these things, politicians are hopeless at explaining - sorry, Mark, but hopeless at explaining - the GST in many ways," Jones told Shadow Minister for Environment Mark Butler, before explaining tax reform to the ordinary Australian with Mercedes-Benz, pearls and billion-dollar comparisons.

Shenhua's watermark saw independent senator for Tasmania Jacqui Lambie and former federal Nationals Cabinet Minister Tim Fischer play the numbers game, taking the fight to the last decimal point.

#qanda tonight is further proof that 98.5% of statistics are just made up #auspol #AlanJones— David Feeney (@Feeney4Batman) July 20, 2015

Followers on the Twitter hashtag #qanda were already doubting the veracity of the figures flying about before Lambie gifted Australia 0.2 per cent more prime agricultural land in about as many seconds.

"Only 3.4 per cent of Australia is prime agricultural land. What idiot would put a coal mine either on or near prime agricultural land? Who would take that risk when prime agricultural land is only 3.6 per cent of Australia's mass?" she said.

Fischer leapt in to put that wobbly figure "in perspective".

"The mining area covered in the Federal electorate of New England is 0.1 per cent. In the Hunter Valley, it is 1 per cent, thus the average for the State of NSW, including our prime agricultural land occupied by mining? 0.1 per cent," he said.

@Kaubo to try and make you forget this pic.twitter.com/Cx4OicScqf— Kate Ausburn (@kateausburn) July 20, 2015

Lambie and Jones both had a few choice stats to prove and disprove the efficacy of wind farms respectively.

But at the end of the program, Jones had no statistics to clinch the final question: "Are you an angel, or a bad boy?"

"Could be both," he answered. Corroborating figures were probably in his dossier somewhere.