‘I’ve never seen anything like it’: Annabel Crabb’s ‘wild’ chat with Peter Dutton

By any measure, Annabel Crabb is a busy woman. The night before our interview, she’d been up until midnight making two cakes for today’s Kitchen Cabinet shoot and watching the Women’s World Cup match between Jamaica and Brazil on TV. A few days before that, she was in Perth doing more Kitchen Cabinet and then onto the Logies in Sydney. Then, a couple of days after our interview, she was in Adelaide to perform a live show for her outrageously successful podcast, Chat 10 Looks 3, with co-host Leigh Sales. On Monday night, she was back in Sydney, at Homebush, for the Matildas’ game against Denmark.

“I function better when I’m a bit overloaded,” she says. “My brain moves really fast. So if I’m under-occupied, I get sort of paranoid.”

That I’ve managed to get her to sit for an hour seems like a tiny miracle, especially as she has been shooting Kitchen Cabinet, the show in which she brings dessert to a politician’s house and in return, they cook the main meal, all day.

It’s only two weeks before it goes to air. But here we are, cup of tea in hand, and I’ve even been plied with a slice of the dairy-free raspberry and macadamia vacherin she had made for independent senator Lidia Thorpe. “It’s wacky. It’s got halva in it and coconut yoghurt and a bit of miso,” she says. “All sort of squished together. And somehow it’s delicious.”

It’s been eight years since Crabb last came knocking for Kitchen Cabinet. In that time, we’ve had two elections, one pandemic and, yes, three prime ministers. It’s not like she hasn’t been busy – we’re talking a couple of podcasts, TV shows, live shows, election night panels, cookbooks, essays – enough to keep the Annabel Crabb Industrial Complex ticking over at a fine rate.

But with a fresh batch of politicians in the 47th parliament, Crabb thought it was time to bring Kitchen Cabinet back.

“When the new parliament was elected in 2022, I had a look and just went, ‘I reckon it’s time to come back because there’s so many interesting people,’” she says. “And also, it’s the most diverse Parliament we’ve ever had. And that’s been really interesting casting this series because when we first started out, it was like, ‘Well, you know, where are we going to find enough women?’ And now, I’ve got a real shortage of middle-age white men.”

The eight episodes feature a mix of newbies (independents Dai Le and Thorpe), some who have been kicking around for a while (Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie, Labor’s Linda Burney and Liberal Karen Andrews) and those who are familiar but not well known (Labor’s Anika Wells and Greens senator Jordon Steele-John).

“This show works out when you see an interview with somebody you think you know really well, and you see them behaving in a different way from normal,” says Crabb. “And that’s interesting. Or it’s interesting when somebody you’ve never heard of pops up that has a really interesting life story.”

Of those Crabb has chosen, the one with the most public baggage is Dutton. Ever since he was announced as a guest, comments online have been pointed: “Won’t be watching Peter Dutton. Such a dreadful decisive [sic] man. That’s about as polite as I can be”, etc.

Crabb has heard it all before. When the first episode of Kitchen Cabinet aired in 2012, starring the jolly double act of Christopher Pyne and Amanda Vanstone, one viewer tweeted, “I’ll never forgive you for making me like Christopher Pyne,” Crabb recalls, laughing. “It isn’t a question of making people like them, I’m just a curious person. And I like seeing people function in a different context and see what they will tell you.”

She was also accused of being soft on Scott Morrison when his episode aired in 2015, just after he was appointed treasurer in the Turnbull government. He cooked a curry and said he didn’t care what people thought of him.

“If you’re going to go in there and be snotty with somebody, just because you disagree with them, then it’s disrespectful to people who vote for that person,” she says. “And I also think, I mean, this is an increasingly lonely view, but I’m always more interested in talking to people with whom I disagree, than people with whom I agree.

“I don’t really understand this whole, ‘You shouldn’t get this personal platform’ or ‘You shouldn’t hear from them because their views are repellent’ or whatever. I actually think it’s more interesting to talk to people whose thought processes you don’t necessarily comprehend because you’ll often find out a bit more about why they think that way. It doesn’t mean that you’re convinced by them, or that you want to be their best friend. But it’s always interesting.”

“People don’t care when men are bad at cooking, they think it’s cute. But when women are, wow.”

Annabel Crabb

Dutton, says Crabb, was the biggest surprise of this series. She didn’t know what to expect – here, after all, is a man who has long traded on his political hardman persona and efforts to soften up his public image have usually fallen flat. “The Dutton interview is like a wild ride,” she says. He cooked her seafood chowder and was extremely methodical in the kitchen. “He sat at that bench, and he had everything laid out. And it was chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. He did not step away from that bench. At any point. I’ve never seen anything like it, it was very organised.”

Crabb cops most of the criticism on the chin. “There’s always someone with an opinion, to tell you why you’re an idiot, or why you’re worthless. And after many years of such feedback from people who are either named or not named, you sort of think, well, you’ve got to make up your mind about whose opinion they care about.

“And you’ve also got to have a pretty clear idea of why you’re doing things the way you’re doing them. I have never resiled from the view that interviewing somebody in a different way can winkle out new information. And it can also be revealing just to watch people respond. And, honestly, you can learn that without me getting into a fist fight with Peter Dutton.”

That Dutton was happy to be filmed at home, chatting about his love of the Food Channel and about being mocked for his appearance, says a lot more about what male politicians feel they have to gain from appearing on Kitchen Cabinet. For the women, however, it’s a different story. Think of how former prime minister Julia Gillard was hounded over a 2005 photo shoot that featured an empty fruit bowl in her kitchen.

“People don’t care when men are bad at cooking, they think it’s cute,” says Crabb. “But when women are, wow. Think about Julia Gillard, she didn’t have fruit in her bowl, right? And the women who I film with are always much more anxious.

“I went to the home of one woman in this series, I won’t say who because it wasn’t on camera, and she was really tense. And I said, ‘What’s up? You seem nervous,’ and she said, ‘Well, I am.’ And I said, ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen?’ And she said, ‘The worst thing that could happen is that my kitchen looks awful. And my food isn’t nice, and I’m not interesting enough for you.’

“And I thought, jeez, that is a tragedy. No bloke has ever said that to me. Joe Hockey couldn’t even cut an iceberg lettuce. And nobody took issue with that, they’re just like, ‘Oh, you know, he must be so busy running the country’ or whatever.”

Crabb has been a political journalist ever since she started her career at The Advertiser in Adelaide in 1997. And while some would run far away from covering politics – OK, me – Crabb does make it look enormously fun.

What always sticks in my mind is seeing Crabb on the job, in which she is keenly watching the then US president George W. Bush pick his way through the lunch buffet during his 2007 visit to Sydney for the APEC conference. To me, it sums up what makes her such a good journalist – she is a total stickybeak.

“I’m super nosy,” she says, laughing. “My favourite thing – my children hate this – is I love eavesdropping on people’s conversations. We were at the coffee cart near our house at the park the other day, and there was this guy having a really intense conversation. It sounded like he was trying to conclude a real estate deal or something. And I’m hanging around pretending, deliberating over our order or something, and the kids are like, ‘Come on’ and I’m like, ‘Just let me listen to it.’”

Crabb turned 50 earlier this year. And despite all the hoopla – she performed a show at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in celebration of the milestone earlier this year – it has been a tough few years.
“I lost my brother [James] last year,” she says. “And that was a shocking thing – he took his own life, which I always mention because I don’t think suicide should be not discussed – and that was just a wrenching, terrible thing.

“And when something like that happens, whether you’re 50 or not, it just causes a huge reinvention and reflection on your life. So, I’ve definitely done that. And then more recently, I lost my very treasured sister-in-law, which was another horrendous thing.

“So that probably has made me just a bit more aware of how suddenly terrible things can happen. And I hope that it’s made me better at not looking away from pain.”

With age, though, has come confidence.

“It’s funny because sometimes if someone’s having an argument with me, or shouting at me on social media, it’s amazing how quickly the put-down is. ‘Get back to your stupid cooking show’, ‘Get back in the kitchen’, you know? Cooking as a feminised activity really invites a kind of put-down that suggests that you’re not doing anything interesting or important, or that you’re lightweight.

“I don’t really take that on board very much any more, I probably did at some point, but I know what I do takes a lot of planning. It’s intriguing, the better I get at it, the more interesting I find it.”

Kitchen Cabinet returns on August 15 at 8pm on the ABC.

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