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. So we in the bunker are looking forward to more 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 on the show that she could empathise with people who were struggling because after uni 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 licenses 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; he was synonymous with “Operation Sovereign Borders”, the blanket of silence placed over “on 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.
