Whether it was the decision to put one of the more likeable figures in political journalism on TV with the world’s least likeable guests, or the format of cosy and humanising profiles of people responsible for variously sized portions of national shame, the ABC’s Kitchen Cabinet always came across as a prank on everyone involved. And now it returns.
We in the bunker are looking forward to more heartwarming moments like these:
Cash carried away
The primary defence for a show like this is that the relaxed atmosphere sees the curtain of political rhetoric pulled back to the human underneath. We suppose that’s what you’d call the revelation from then-employment minister Michaelia Cash during her 2016 appearance that she could empathise with people who were struggling because after university she went on holiday for three years.
“I started with nothing. When I backpacked for three years, I practically had nothing,” claimed Cash.
And like so many people who have practically nothing, Cash’s father, George, was at the time six years into his decades-long political career as a member of WA Parliament.
The rogues
Then-Liberal senator for South Australia Cory Bernardi was already famous as a purveyor of cheap, empty bile by the time of his 2015 appearance on Kitchen Cabinet. He was perhaps best known for comparing marriage equality to bestiality and saying he was “against Islam” (“a totalitarian political and religious ideology”) when host Annabel Crabb and co decided, for reasons no-one can fathom, that they wanted to get to know the real Cory.
He managed to refrain from any wild-eyed proclamations about how trans people shouldn’t be allowed driver licences or whatever and instead spoke about the time he thought he’d literally killed John Howard. He reminisced about a pre-politics lunch with Howard in the lead-up to the 1996 election which Bernardi spent “coughing and spluttering” all over the future PM. Bernardi had unknowingly contracted tuberculosis, and when Howard later had to enter hospital with lung problems, Bernardi was convinced he’d “done John Howard in”.
Incidentally, Tasmanian Jacqui Lambie was fairly terse in her appearance on the program.
“He’s just an arsehole,” she said of Bernardi.
“Typical ‘I’m born with a silver spoon up my rear end’.”
Cook-off for the nation’s heart
This seems like something we should remember — then-prime minister Kevin Rudd and opposition leader Tony Abbott both appearing on Kitchen Cabinet in the final week leading up to the 2013 federal election. Both were on brand: Abbott barbecued, Rudd made a high tea, and absolutely nothing interesting happened — except for the fact Rudd had to deny that he delayed a national security briefing on the crisis in Syria to shoot his episode. Abbott got better ratings, which was very much Australia’s vibe at the time.
At home with Scott
An early sign of his powerful anti-charisma and towering genius for making people furious, Scott Morrison’s appearance on Kitchen Cabinet summed up everything that made people mad about the show. The then-treasurer had recently vacated the immigration portfolio, which he held during one of its most poisonous periods, and he was synonymous with “Operation Sovereign Borders”, the blanket of silence placed over “water matters” and the island gulags holding some of the world’s most vulnerable people, including children, their mental well-being destroyed over interminable periods detention.
Morrison, for his part, once erroneously and unrepentantly accused charity staff of encouraging asylum seekers to self-harm. That was the guy Crabb was joining for some chit-chat and Sri Lankan curry. There was no mention of that boatload of Sri Lankan refugees that Morrison sent back. Crabb brought a dessert with a “Middle Eastern feel”. Speaking of food, the same week of Morrison’s appearance, human teeth were found in a meal served to an asylum seeker in the Manus Island detention centre.
Are you excited about the return of Kitchen Cabinet, or does this sort of program belong in the kitchen bin? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
I watched a couple of the originals and at times had to stop myself throwing up. Absolute bastards getting powder puff interviews,
Never again!
I have been an ironed on ABC person for about 70 years and to see the decline in quality of broadcast in all aspects in recent years distresses me greatly.
I agree. Sadly, there are many reasons why the ABC is hard to watch/fathom these days. This excellent article outlines one of them.
Shows like Kitchen Cabinet are problematic as it really lets politicians launder their identities and avoid meaningful scrutiny. I understand it is billed as giving politicians a chance to go off script but it is just as scripted and driven by talking points as anything else. Whether it’s Crabbs intent or not, she just comes off as mates with the politicians where really, they’re the enemy.
Therein lies the problem. They aren’t our mates. No matter how they behave.
Calling Crabb ‘one of the more likeable figures in political journalism’ is debatable. I don’t find her likeable, and she’s a cream-puff ‘journalist’; really the perfect person to be matey with those awful people and their cringe-worthy efforts to be matey with her, and vicariously with the viewers.
Crikey is clearly struggling to fill space previously enhanced by Guy Rundle’s contributions. No Australian publication can afford to lose a journo of his calibre.
I totally agree.
Yeah nah, takes more than one writer and one felt that Rundle, nominally of the left, was used as the RW or conservative devil’s advocate, or is one just out of touch with Oz?
Would have been interesting if he wrote more about things he knew well e.g. issues of and for the left vs. adopting positions on Russia’s invasion shared with faux anti-imperialist left &/or RW libertarian peaceniks?
Absolutely agree – found a pretty good article on his disappearance btw:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/06/17/kdfm-j17.html
Thanks for the link. Crikey has not done its reputation any favours amongst those who are looking for brave alternative news with its treatment of Rundle
In a similar vein to the Higgins saga, it would have been interesting to have Rundle take on the James Ashby – Peter Slipper allegations in the day. That always had the hint of a political set-up but nobody ever dug down into it, even though it effectively brought down a government.
Pretty sure that Grundle did perform one of his verbal arabesques on Ashby (as an individual who is less than meets the eye) in general, esp re Pawleen, but also solid on the grossly abused Slipper.
Of course, the bunker archives have probably been cleansed of the unperson’s misreporting so lots of lucksearching.
Agree and ta for the link – pity that accurate assessment of the article in question can’t be reproduced here.
The vapour would endanger the O hole – ozone hole… or is it the CO2 blanket, with dutch oven methane?
I had a brief look – what a cock wag of an article
The more this unperson is mentioned the greater the likelihood of hagiography. Only absence is noted.
Charlie has always written excellent pieces like this one. I haven’t noticed that Crikey is enhanced by Rundle’s efforts, such as they are. He’s been slipping off to the right for a very long time. I hope he never returns.
Ha. Gee, I wish Bernardi had managed to kill off Howard – I mean politically, of course. Imagine a contemporary political culture without that craggy and cantankerous shadow breathing it’s toxic air into our atmosphere. A world without Little Honest John Howard and his insufferable, mean and privileged sense of self, pedaled by so many. A better world, certainly. Though, but a dream. Instead, here we are, stuck with our contemporary Wet conservative political climate. To the trenches we must go.
I recall an article some years ago by Annabelle Crabbe in The Monthly, about Julia Gillard, where she spent a significant amount of time commenting on Gillard’s dress sense. Have never been able to take her seriously since
A m.o. from the Mudroch playbook. He had his female hacks go after Gillard personally to save his males being looking misogynists.