tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/kitchen-cabinet-6970/articlesKitchen Cabinet – The Conversation2024-03-17T19:01:55Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2203272024-03-17T19:01:55Z2024-03-17T19:01:55ZOutrage is a key performance indicator for Peter Dutton, the ‘bad cop’ of politics. But what does he value?<p>Lech Blaine and Peter Dutton are both from Queensland, where the political culture is tough and masculine and politics south of the border always good for a spot of confected outrage. </p>
<p>So Blaine, author of <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2021/09/top-blokes">Quarterly Essay 83: Top Blokes: The Larrikin Myth, Class and Power</a>, is a good choice to try to make some sense of the federal Liberal Party’s current leader. </p>
<p>Who is Peter Dutton? What drives him? Why did he choose politics? What does power mean to him? And what does he hope to achieve if he wins government? </p>
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<p><em>Bad Cop: Peter Dutton’s Strongman Politics: Quarterly Essay – Lech Blaine (Black Inc.)</em></p>
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<p><a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/bad-cop">Bad Cop</a>, Blaine’s second Quarterly Essay, mixes straightforward narration of events in Dutton’s life with perceptive interpretation and one-liners like: “Politics would enable Dutton to be the bad cop without fear of physical injury.” </p>
<p>Dutton’s first job was as a policeman, which exposed him to the worst of human behaviour. He took from this experience a suspicion of the legal system’s presumption of innocence and its strict rules of evidence, disdain for those who try to understand human criminality and transgression, and no compassion at all for the criminal and depraved. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/show/kitchen-cabinet/series/7/video/FA2211H002S00">on Kitchen Cabinet</a>, Annabel Crabb put to him his wife Kirrilly’s description of him as black and white, without shades of grey, he agreed. </p>
<p>But, as Blaine shows, we know much more about the black in Dutton’s world than the white: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jan/03/peter-dutton-says-victorians-scared-to-go-out-because-of-african-gang-violence">African gangs</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/fake-refugees-dutton-adopts-an-alternative-fact-to-justify-our-latest-human-rights-violation-78175">illegal immigrants</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2020/feb/25/kristina-keneally-calls-for-bettina-arndt-to-be-stripped-of-australia-day-honour-politics-live">Islamic terrorists</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/nov/22/peter-dutton-lebanese-muslim-comments-dismay-security-services-labor">Lebanese criminals</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-peter-dutton-most-deported-kiwis-arent-paedophiles-and-youre-hurting-our-relationship-with-nz-120655">paedophiles</a>, <a href="https://nit.com.au/19-10-2023/8231/this-is-not-what-first-nations-people-want-coalition-of-groups-attack-peter-duttons-call-for-a-royal-commission">Indigenous sexual abusers</a>, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/one-in-five-a-dole-cheat-minister-20050305-gdzq37.html">welfare cheats</a>. </p>
<p>It is a richly peopled world, compared with the bland suburbia and regional Australia he wants to protect, with much more energy expended on blaming and punishing than on praising. Compared with John Howard, with whom he shares aspects of political style, we know little about Dutton’s heroes and what he values about Australia. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">We know little about what Peter Dutton values about Australia.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>In his interests to stoke fear</h2>
<p>Dutton is a boundary rider. As a politician whose main offering is the promise of safety, it is in his interests to stoke fear. </p>
<p>He thrives on conflict and when he is not fighting the criminals and depraved, he is fighting those who are not as alert as he is to danger: human rights advocates, inner-city elites, bleeding hearts, the welfare lobby, the Greens, and of course his arch enemy in our two-party Westminster system, the Labor Party. </p>
<p>Mostly, it seems what he wants is a reaction. For Dutton, says Blaine, outrage from Labor, the Greens and on Twitter is a key performance indicator. Hence his political strategy of abandoning the inner city to Labor, the Greens and the Teals – and winning government from the outer suburbs and the regions. </p>
<p>The big question facing Dutton’s political future and his electoral strategy is whether Australia is quite as fearful and homogeneous as he imagines, or whether, as Blaine argues, he is forever riding a time machine to 2001.</p>
<p>Dutton resigned from the police after he crashed his car during a chase. He shifted into property developing with his father, and then into politics. In 2001, John Howard’s Tampa election, Dutton won the seat of Dickson, which he still holds. </p>
<p>It was, says Blaine, a fateful moment for an ex-policeman with authoritarian tendencies to embark on a political career. But compared with Howard, we have little sense of what else, besides safety and not being Labor, Dutton is offering. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-liberals-lost-the-moral-middle-class-and-now-the-teal-independents-may-well-cash-in-182293">How the Liberals lost the 'moral middle class' - and now the teal independents may well cash in</a>
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<h2>Style over substance</h2>
<p>Howard had enduring policy interests – in economic policy and industrial relations. Does Dutton have any policy interests, besides law and order? He was not even especially competent in his <a href="https://theconversation.com/peter-dutton-becomes-national-security-ministerial-tsar-in-portfolio-shake-up-81186">supersized ministry of Home Affairs</a>, where his obsession with keeping out asylum seekers at any cost distracted him from the border incursions of organised crime and the systemic rorting of the immigration system, together with problems with the award of contracts. </p>
<p>As Minister for Home Affairs, concludes Blaine, “His bad cop act was a triumph of style over substance.” His championing of nuclear power to reduce Australia’s emissions, despite all the <a href="https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/nuclear-power-stations-are-not-appropriate-for-australia-and-probably-never-will-be/">expert evidence</a> it is much more expensive than renewables and will take too long, shows that opposing Labor rather than solving problems is his primary motivation.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dutton-wants-a-mature-debate-about-nuclear-power-by-the-time-weve-had-one-new-plants-will-be-too-late-to-replace-coal-224513">Dutton wants a 'mature debate' about nuclear power. By the time we've had one, new plants will be too late to replace coal</a>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Lech Blaine gives ‘a compelling account of Dutton the strong man’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Black Inc.</span></span>
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<p>Blaine gives a compelling account of Dutton the strong man, but he also claims that if you watch him for a long time, you see a man who is small and scared. The <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo27832683.html">pioneering political psychologist Harold Lasswell says</a> politicians like Dutton, preoccupied with the management of aggression and with provoking reaction, are driven by low self-esteem and a compulsive need for deference. </p>
<p>This fits Blaine’s observation, but I needed more on this side of the man. What is he scared of and why? Of being ignored and irrelevant? Of inner demons that need to be kept under lock and key? Of a world that is changing? All of the above? </p>
<p>Writing about the moving target of a politician seeking power is a tough gig. Some learn as they go, some don’t. It’s too early yet to tell is Dutton is a learner or not – but Blaine has told us what to watch out for.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220327/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Judith Brett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In his second Quarterly Essay, Lech Blaine tries to make sense of former Queensland policeman Peter Dutton. Who is he? What drives him? And what does he hope to achieve if he wins government?Judith Brett, Emeritus Professor of Politics, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/747512017-03-30T03:09:22Z2017-03-30T03:09:22ZWhy politicians and television still need each other<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162601/original/image-20170327-3276-6glisa.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Malcolm Turnbull goes it alone on Q&A with host Tony Jones ahead of the 2016 federal election.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC iView</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We are living through a period of particularly combative media-politics relations, driven largely by the Trump presidency and the ongoing <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/fake-news-33438">“fake news” debate</a>. But, as an <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rearvision/the-president-and-the-press/8343718">ABC Rear View</a> documentary reminded us recently, tension or outright hostility between politicians and journalists is far from new.</p>
<p>For decades, in every democratic country with a genuinely free and independent media, the two groups have danced around each other like reluctant suitors. There has been occasional bursts of name-calling, sulking and tears when it all goes pear-shaped.</p>
<p>The truth is, both groups need the other.</p>
<p>Politicians need the media to communicate with citizens. Media organisations rely heavily on political stories as a key source of news and commentary. The more that media platforms and outlets have proliferated – to the point where we inhabit a 24-hour real-time news culture with global reach and influence – the more mutually dependent the relationship becomes.</p>
<p>It took a long time for politicians to wake up to the fact that, in addition to their key democratic function as the Fourth Estate, media organisations can be an ally in political communication. Not so long ago, many politicians were still reluctant, even sniffy, about appearing on shows like the ABC’s Q&A, or infotainment hybrids such as The Project. </p>
<p>They saw primetime public performance as dumbed-down politics. Others genuinely feared failure in such exposed platforms, particularly when programs went out live.</p>
<p>But audience expectations have changed with the gradual decline of deference towards political elites, which began in the 1960s. It has become a recognised requirement of the professional politician to engage with citizens in the places where they are. The interaction is no longer just the town-hall meeting or campaign hustings of the analogue era, but in the living room, on the TV, and on social media. </p>
<p>Sometimes, as in Q&A, citizens are physically present in the arena, asking questions and making comments. To be seen to run scared from such engagement can damage a politician, while enthusiastic media performance brings rewards in terms of publicity and policy promotion. </p>
<p>The former British prime minister, Tony Blair, was good at it, as was Australia’s former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, who emerged as a potential leader not least because of his apparent likeability on breakfast TV. </p>
<p>Tony Abbott came over well on Q&A, as did his treasurer, Joe Hockey, only to fall out with the ABC over its journalism and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/qa-fallout-tony-abbott-orders-frontbench-ministers-to-boycott-abc-show-20150705-gi5olb.html">direct his ministers to boycott Q&A</a>. It was not a good call, if his short-lived premiership is anything to go by.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Kevin Rudd and Joe Hockey worked well on Channel Seven’s Sunrise program.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In the digital age, when audiences are fragmenting and diversifying across TV, radio, online and (still) print platforms, an ambitious politician has more opportunities to make a splash than ever before.</p>
<p>Hard-hitting journalistic formats such as the ABC’s 7.30 and RN Drive remain key platforms for politicians to articulate and defend their policies. Malcolm Turnbull has adopted a noticeably more active strategy on this front than his predecessor. More than half his media interviews in his first six months as prime minister were given to the ABC.</p>
<p>Commercial radio talkback programs such as those helmed by Alan Jones, Ray Hadley and Paul Murray are also important venues for senior politicians to reach their audiences. But they do risk a bollocking if they don’t see things the presenter’s way. </p>
<p>Jones famously declared, at a time when Turnbull was boycotting the show, that “no-one has ever won an election by not appearing on my program”. Although such a connection is hard to prove, few aspiring politicians have the nerve to avoid the behemoths of Australian commercial radio.</p>
<p>If the above are inquisitorial, often critical examples of the traditional Fourth Estate function of the political media, politicians are increasingly seeking a “softer” mode of media engagement. </p>
<p>They love to be invited onto The Project, for example, knowing they may be gently satirised as part of the show’s “infotainment” ethos. But they can also be allowed to show another, more human side of their personality than they can when batting away tough questions from Leigh Sales on 7.30. </p>
<p>As US president, Barack Obama won over many hearts and minds with his appearances on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. Tony Abbott <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmyoRNL0hrQ">appeared on Big Brother</a> in his successful 2013 election campaign. He was judged to have done quite well in targeting a section of the electorate that is less likely to tune into Lateline.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162600/original/image-20170327-3283-1es0n9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162600/original/image-20170327-3283-1es0n9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162600/original/image-20170327-3283-1es0n9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162600/original/image-20170327-3283-1es0n9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162600/original/image-20170327-3283-1es0n9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162600/original/image-20170327-3283-1es0n9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162600/original/image-20170327-3283-1es0n9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Christopher Pyne and Anthony Albanese appear on Kitchen Cabinet with host Annabel Crabb.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC iview</span></span>
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<p>ABC’s Kitchen Cabinet has become established as a leading political media format, with its domestic setting and human-interest approach to what makes politicians tick. Its audience ratings indicate that the Australian public enjoys this more intimate approach to political content. Perhaps viewers see it as presenting a valuable insight into the “real” person behind the more conventional political rhetoric.</p>
<p>As seen most dramatically with Donald Trump’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-the-wannabe-king-ruling-by-twiat-72269">government by tweet</a>, the rise of social media has opened up a whole new sphere of digital communication that bypasses the Big Media platforms of TV and radio. The latter still reach vastly bigger audiences than the average tweet or Facebook post, and command a credibility that seems sure to last for at least a few years more.</p>
<p>The challenge for TV and radio producers is to devise political content formats – Kitchen Cabinet being one excellent example, The Project another – that combine the reach of traditional broadcasting with the contemporary audience demand for access to the real, the authentic, the human in their political representatives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian McNair receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a Chief Investigator within QUT's Digital Media Research Centre, and the co-author of Politics, Media and Democracy in Australia (Routledge, 2017, forthcoming).</span></em></p>Television shows that reveal politicians in a different light, such as Channel Ten’s The Project, or the ABC’s Kitchen Cabinet or Q&A, are vital outlets for them to convey their messages.Brian McNair, Professor of Journalism, Media and Communication, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/600382016-05-26T02:20:22Z2016-05-26T02:20:22ZWhose kitchen rules? Annabel’s, of course!<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124069/original/image-20160526-17546-16ef3b2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Annabel Crabb dines with senator Jacqui Lambie for Kitchen Cabinet. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tonight sees the return of one of the ABC’s most popular and innovative political media formats – Annabel Crabb’s Kitchen Cabinet, featuring on the first edition Jacqui Lambie.</p>
<p>You probably know the drill: Annabel rocks up to a politician’s home, or said pollie comes to her place in Sydney, and the two converse over food and drink about, well, anything really – not usually the big issues on the campaign news agenda, or the merits of the latest stoush between Malcolm and Bill, but personal stuff.</p>
<p>How did you get into politics? What drives you? What kind of person are you, really, and can you make a mean muffin?</p>
<p>Critics see Kitchen Cabinet as part of the problem of modern day political culture. It’s <a href="https://newmatilda.com/2015/10/29/junk-food-journalism-why-annabel-crabbs-kitchen-cabinet-is-toxic/">“dumbed down”, human interest-oriented current affairs</a>, they would say, avoiding the complicated, often difficult substance of politics in preference for the style and image of the individual politician. It’s infotainment, and too cosy to qualify as “serious” journalism, providing its subjects with a platform to promote themselves rather than address the concerns of the nation.</p>
<p>And indeed, Kitchen Cabinet is a good example of the hybridisation of political media we see in much of Australian TV today. An important element of the reality shows that dominate prime-time is the journey made by participants, as they compete with each and overcome personal obstacles to emerge triumphant. MasterChef’s tagline of ‘ordinary people, extraordinary cooking’ exemplifies this approach.</p>
<p>Kitchen Cabinet taps into several elements of the cookery show format, providing a hybrid current affairs space where our interest in the private, domestic lives of politicians can be explored through polite, friendly conversation. </p>
<p>By this means Crabb hopes she can reveal more than the tougher interview styles pursued by Leigh Sales or David Speers. Or, if not “more”, then something else that adversarial journalism tends to miss – the human dimension of those strange individuals who aspire to govern over our lives.</p>
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<p>In her Sydney kitchen, Annabel Crabb explains to me that the idea for Kitchen Cabinet arose from her experience as a political reporter in the Canberra press gallery. In the late 1990s she, like her colleagues in the gallery, would use various techniques to obtain material from political sources. </p>
<p>One was to invite him or her for dinner, and talk “about other stuff. It wasn’t under the pressure of an interview situation, you talked to them about their experience, or what they want to talk about”. For Crabb, these encounters produced information about the politician in question that was, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>incredibly interesting in itself, because you immediately start learning about what’s important to them and what isn’t. That’s all useful stuff, because it helps you to predict how they‘ll respond in certain situations. It tells you about what they’re more or less likely to go for in a policy sense, the things they’re drawn to, the things they’ll die in a ditch for, and the things they won’t. </p>
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<p>This knowledge she regarded as an accidental by-product of her journalism, but “I always thought it would be a good thing to be able to let voters in on that kind of perspective”.</p>
<p>She first suggested the concept that became Kitchen Cabinet in 2007, while she was still a print journalist at the Sydney Morning Herald. She was not initially successful. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The first couple of times I proposed it to various people there were raised eyebrows, and ‘that doesn’t sound like a very good idea’. </p>
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<p>By 2011, however, the ABC had expanded its digital presence, and there was space on channels such as the newly launched ABC2 for what Crabb characterises as “more experimental shows”. This was facilitated by the then-fashionable status of cooking-based reality TV shows. Kitchen Cabinet, says Crabb, “got on the tail end of the cooking craze”.</p>
<p>Her approach in Kitchen Cabinet reflects the broader cultural trend towards confession and self-revelation in the public sphere, and the now routine assumption that private lives and values do relate to public performance; that trust is a key criteria in evaluating politicians.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I feel really strongly that there is nothing wrong with people learning about politics in a different way, and I don’t think it’s unrealistic to look at our system and recognise that yes, it is about policy, but policy is always at the mercy of the people who make decisions about what policy course will be embarked upon and what won’t be.
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The more I watch and learn about politics the more convinced I am that even though from the outside we look at the process of decision-making and assume that it’s bound by rules and regulations and it’s about standing orders, and numbers in caucus or the party room, and factions and whatever…it’s very frequently, disproportionately affected by very personal things.</p>
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<p>Moreover, in the multiplatform digital era of always-on news culture, Crabb sensed that a different approach to political coverage would add something valuable to the stock of public knowledge. </p>
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<p>My view was that the modern environment gives you lots of opportunities to do things differently, and to develop things that should complement other forms of reporting and coverage. I felt that if there was some space on a channel to see politicians differently, to interact with them differently, give people a different view apart from just the straight-down-the-barrel press conference, it couldn’t harm the process.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To achieve this level of insight, she argues that the program must be perceived by politicians as honest and sincere in its aims, rather than a media trap. Says Crabb:</p>
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<p>If you think about what all this proliferation of media appearances has done, it’s actually taught politicians to be very buttoned down, and to speak in prepared phrases, and that’s what people see. They see the rote learning and mistake it for a lack of personal affect. I think if you change the context, and suddenly you’re in their house… </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this sense the format sets out to create a space in which affect can be mobilised and displayed. “It’s not really about the cooking. It’s about having the props that allow you to talk to someone in a different way”.</p>
<p>This allows Kitchen Cabinet to work as a promotional vehicle for anyone who participates; an opportunity to shine away from the routine cycle of media conferences and adversarial interviews where the only thing that matters is being “on message”. The rules of engagement are agreed in advance, the conversation edited to remove the jaggy bits, the politician promised no nasty surprises. This careful management is partly to make Kitchen Cabinet good to watch, and partly to relax the subject, on the grounds that this is how to get the most honest, most authentic expression of his or her private self.</p>
<p>Kitchen Cabinet seeks to gain the trust of politicians, and Crabb’s assurances that the editing process will be fair to the spirit of the format is key to that goal. As is her resolve to interview her guests with politeness, generosity and good humour, as opposed to the “lying bastards” paradigm of the more adversarial political interview.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Of course it’s softer than most political interviews. The whole idea of it is, I’m coming to your house and I’m being polite to you, I’m not yelling at you or calling you a hypocrite. I’m genuinely giving you an opportunity to say what’s important to you, and why you are where you are.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For the politician, she hopes, this approach is conducive to self-revelation of the type the audience will value and learn from.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You liberate them from all the constraints of the standard political interview, and you say, for example, what’s the thing you remember about growing up? Or what do you care about more than anything else? Seeing what people choose to talk about when they have the opportunity to talk about anything tells you an enormous amount straight away about who they are and what’s important to them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many of Crabb’s peers have praised the format, and the logic behind it. Sky News’ political editor, David Speers says he found “the two editions of Kitchen Cabinet with Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd during the [2013] campaign two of the best snapshots of those leaders that I saw. It does put them in a different setting, a different context, and that can be very revealing”. Judged by the ratings achieved in previous seasons of Kitchen Cabinet, the audience agrees.</p>
<h2><br></h2>
<p><em>Kitchen Cabinet airs on ABC and iView on Thursday at 8pm.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60038/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian McNair receives funding from the Australian Research Council. This article draws on research undertaken for ARC Discovery project DP130100705, 'Politics, media and democracy in Australia: public and producer perceptions of the political public sphere'. He is a Chief Investigator within QUT's Digital Media Research Centre.</span></em></p>Kitchen Cabinet is a good example of the hybridisation of political media we see in much of Australian TV today.Brian McNair, Professor of Journalism, Media and Communication, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/505162015-11-11T19:22:58Z2015-11-11T19:22:58ZRecipes for racism? Kitchen Cabinet and the politics of food<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101504/original/image-20151111-21190-1g1l68u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C179%2C1500%2C1053&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Let them eat cake, but remember: food has a political life of its own.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Cooking shows are everywhere these days. As <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/whats-on-tv-wednesday-kitchen-cabinet-is-good-but-may-not-be-good-for-you-20151102-gkoqbn.html">a number of critics</a> <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/11/05/insidious-propaganda-or-a-political-reporters-job-the-art-of-the-soft-interview/">have recently argued</a>, ABC’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/tv/programs/kitchen-cabinet/">Kitchen Cabinet</a> stretches this TV genre to its light-hearted limit by showing parliamentarians cooking in their kitchens while making faux idle chit-chat with journalist Annabel Crabb. </p>
<p>Food ostensibly serves as an apolitical social lubricant for Crabb to show politicians’ human sides, but food has a political life of its own and has long served as a marker of cultural proficiency and belonging. Kitchen Cabinet’s staging of “casual” food preparation and consumption with the nation’s most powerful people reproduces a culture of white Australian entitlement to master and consume any and every cultural product, regardless of who it belongs to.</p>
<p>“Politics is a broad spectrum of people”, <a href="http://www.mamamia.com.au/entertainment/annabel-crabb-kitchen-cabinet/">Crabb said in an interview</a> on Mamamia recently. But actually, it isn’t. Every level of Australian parliamentary politics is dominated by white men. The show is now in its fifth season and the only non-white politician to have been featured is Penny Wong. </p>
<p>“Food is something we all have in common,” Crabb said at the opening of her episode with Wong in 2012, but what it means to cook, share and consume food differs radically depending on who and where you are.</p>
<p>Whatever Crabb and her white dinner date choose to put on the menu – steaks on the barbie for Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott, samosas for Scott Morrison or Chinese for Anthony Albanese and Chris Pyne – their performative consumption of those foods will affirm their identities as Australians, patriots of the rugged land of plenty and aficionados of all cultures, so long as those cultures are contained within consumable dishes. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101509/original/image-20151111-21211-thfm3i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101509/original/image-20151111-21211-thfm3i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101509/original/image-20151111-21211-thfm3i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101509/original/image-20151111-21211-thfm3i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101509/original/image-20151111-21211-thfm3i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101509/original/image-20151111-21211-thfm3i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101509/original/image-20151111-21211-thfm3i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101509/original/image-20151111-21211-thfm3i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Annabel Crabb with Scott Morrison.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a nation <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1992/23.html">founded on racist appropriation</a>, perhaps consumption (and assimilation, its body politic equivalent) is a constituent element of national identity.</p>
<p>Wong cooked a Malaysian fish dish and spoke about learning to cook when she migrated to Australia as a child, food being something that provided her with comfort in the face of racism. </p>
<p>For Wong, food is part of her cultural survival. Migrant communities have long used food as a way of retaining their cultural identity in white-dominated societies. “Curry muncher” is a racist slur used against South Asians, who, as <a href="http://www.global.ucsb.edu/sites/secure.lsit.ucsb.edu.gisp.d7/files/sitefiles/Ameriar12.pdf">a 2012 study in Canada</a> by Lalaie Ameeriar shows, were advised “not to attend job interviews smelling like foods that are foreign to us”. </p>
<p>But for white people, consumption of foreign food marks them not as different, but tolerant. White Australians, according to a <a href="http://www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au/doc/bailey_1.pdf">1995 report by Carol Bailey</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>more readily perceive disadvantages than advantages to multiculturalism, and struggle to find much beyond the one consistently cited […] positive aspect of multicultural Australia: the greater diversity and sophistication in food and restaurants. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As the American author bell hooks argues in her 1992 book <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/529568.Black_Looks">Black Looks: Race and Representation within consumer culture</a>, ethnicity becomes seasoning to spice up the dull white palate. It is something to be eaten, consumed and quickly forgotten.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101506/original/image-20151111-21214-xc12sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101506/original/image-20151111-21214-xc12sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101506/original/image-20151111-21214-xc12sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101506/original/image-20151111-21214-xc12sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101506/original/image-20151111-21214-xc12sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101506/original/image-20151111-21214-xc12sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101506/original/image-20151111-21214-xc12sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101506/original/image-20151111-21214-xc12sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Annabel Crabb.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Consumption and forgetting was the major theme of Crabb’s dinner with Scott Morrison, the opening episode of Season 5. Forgotten was his presiding over the towing of refugee boats out of Australian waters, a practice which supplements a strategy of “deterring” refugees by imprisoning them on remote Pacific islands.</p>
<p>Forgotten was Morrison’s introduction of <a href="http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/num_act/mamplatalca2014822/">legislation</a> that removed the duty to comply with international law or act fairly when detaining refugees at sea; curtailed refugees’ appeal rights; and reintroduced temporary protection visas. </p>
<p>Forgotten was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/07/australia-asylum-seekers-sri-lanka-sea-transfer">Morrison’s transfer at sea</a> of at least one boat carrying Sri Lankan refugees, including Tamils, back into the hands of Sri Lankan authorities. </p>
<p>Forgotten was the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/04/us-sri-lanka-australia-idUSKBN0F903Z20140704#4sDumj11X9TpH8Hy.97">UN’s expression of “profound concern”</a> last July while Morrison <a href="http://theconversation.com/operation-sovereign-borders-dignified-silence-or-diminishing-democracy-21294">capped media communications</a> on Operation Sovereign Borders.</p>
<p>It’s hard to believe that Morrison’s choice to put Sri Lankan samosas (he calls them “ScoMosas”) on the menu for Crabb (who brought a dessert “with a Middle Eastern feel”) was coincidental. By showing the public that he can make and eat Sri Lankan food, Morrison seemed to be attempting to prove that he, and by implication those who voted for him, are not racist, but in fact tolerant and cultured white Australians. </p>
<p>As Crabb and Morrison joyfully prepare and eat the food of the very people Morrison prevented from entering Australia, they perform their white Australian entitlement to own and consume what does not belong to them.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://newmatilda.com/2015/10/29/junk-food-journalism-why-annabel-crabbs-kitchen-cabinet-is-toxic/">Amy McGuire argued</a> in her piece in New Matilda following the Morrison episode, Kitchen Cabinet dumbs down political debate and makes people feel that politicians are “just like us”, while those affected by their policies remain thoroughly foreign and un-relatable.</p>
<p>In response to the wave of critique set off by McGuire, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/kitchen-cabinet-when-policy-combats-off-the-menu-20151106-gksnir">Crabb argued</a> in a recent Fairfax column that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>To observe [politicians] in their own environment offers […] some useful information about how they might behave outside it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But this argument ignores several realities: that in parliamentary politics, personal motivations must regularly be sacrificed in order to tow the party line and appease the polls; that politicians are not really “in their own environment” when there is a camera crew in their kitchen; and that personal motivations are ultimately irrelevant to those on the receiving end of political decisions.</p>
<p>It also ignores the issue of race that McGuire’s piece raises. By refusing to address McGuire’s article, Crabb could be seen to be avoiding the issue of white Australian racism perpetuated by the show.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101507/original/image-20151111-21214-wxlefs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101507/original/image-20151111-21214-wxlefs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101507/original/image-20151111-21214-wxlefs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101507/original/image-20151111-21214-wxlefs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101507/original/image-20151111-21214-wxlefs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101507/original/image-20151111-21214-wxlefs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101507/original/image-20151111-21214-wxlefs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101507/original/image-20151111-21214-wxlefs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Annabel Crabb and Nova Peris.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A few days after Morrison’s Kitchen Cabinet, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/03/human-teeth-found-in-meal-served-to-asylum-seekers-on-manus-island">human teeth were found in meals served to refugees</a> imprisoned on Manus Island pursuant to Morrison’s policies. If Crabb is sincere in her quest to make Australian politics less conflictual and nasty, her time would be better spent chatting to those locked in the secure dining halls created by politicians than in the cosy kitchens of parliamentarians. In Australia’s current political climate, it is not our politicians who need humanising.</p>
<p>Next week, on November 18, we can look forward to an episode with gold medallist turned Labor Senator Nova Peris. The <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SenatorPeris/posts/615632858576948">trailer shows</a> Crabb and the woman who will be the show’s second non-white interviewee sitting on a rock against a vast Northern Territory landscape, eating from paper plates. </p>
<p>I wonder what we will see Peris cook. Kangaroo tail, to show white Australians that Aboriginal culture is not so scary after all, or a white or Asian dish, to show white Australians that she is really just like them? </p>
<p>Either way, we can be sure that Crabb will devour the food hungrily, remark upon its delicious flavour and allow the nation to keep unsavoury topics like structural racist violence off the table.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50516/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Keenan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Kitchen Cabinet’s staging of “casual” food preparation with the nation’s most powerful people reproduces a culture of white Australian entitlement to master and consume any and every cultural product.Sarah Keenan, Lecturer in Law, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/177242013-09-02T03:26:54Z2013-09-02T03:26:54ZKevin’s Kitchen Nightmare: Rudd, Abbott and the politics of cooking<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30467/original/n4dw9vf2-1378088741.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1743%2C3744%2C2920&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott will both appear on ABC TV show Kitchen Cabinet in the final week of the campaign. But who is more advantaged by the reality TV and the politics of cooking?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/ABC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The penultimate act in this year’s election drama will be … a cook-off. This campaign has largely steered away from “entertaining politics”, but at the last hurdle, Messrs Rudd and Abbott have fallen for the allure of celebrity. At the death, the would-be prime ministers will try to persuade us on personality alone. And they’ll be doing it on ABC television show <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/tv/kitchencabinet/">Kitchen Cabinet</a>. Why? And who does this last gambit favour?</p>
<p>The answer to the latter question is Tony Abbott. But we have to go around the world to understand why Kitchen Cabinet cooks better with the Coalition.</p>
<p>Kevin Rudd has already been <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/kevin-rudd-denies-delaying-syria-briefing-for-annabel-crabb-show-20130824-2sj2y.html">criticised</a> for taking part in the show. Opponents think the prime minister should have been thinking about Syria, not spatulas. In his defence, we might say that modern media politics demands a time on celebrity duty.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for Labor, a bad choice looks worse when we contemplate the politics of TV dinners. Cooking is the most totalitarian corner of the inherently conservative reality television market. The way that food is imagined, prepared and consumed onscreen conjures up politically-loaded visions of how life should be. And the vision is never about a fair go.</p>
<p>Things weren’t meant to get this way. It’s just that food and reality television are a bad recipe.</p>
<p>Let’s go back in time to noughties Britain. Back then, many television executives decided that reality work shows - like <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006vq92">Dragons’ Den</a>, where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to would-be investors - could teach us useful lessons about working, getting ahead and getting on with people. Television chef Jamie Oliver, however, had already seized the idea.</p>
<p>At first, Oliver used cooking to put class and social justice back onscreen. The loveable <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mockney">mockney</a> taught audiences that cooking was caring. His <a href="http://www.jamieoliver.com/the-fifteen-apprentice-programme/about/story">Fifteen experiment</a> - later exported to Melbourne - educated viewers on the social barriers that prevented working class kids from succeeding. This was a slap in the face to other lifestyle shows that were only interested in high income, well-educated middle class people.</p>
<p>His next project, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/apr/27/jamie-oliver-school-meals-gove">Jamie’s School Dinners</a>, was even more radical. In the context of fears over “Broken Britain” - a nation driven to the dogs by feral youth lacking in skills and human decency - Oliver argued that the problem was food. Or, more precisely, the trans-fatty e-numbered garbage that Thatcherite reforms let schoolkids “choose” for their cafeteria lunches. Consumer choice was a bad thing. Kids should be given what they need, not what they want. And if the Labour government of the time was really a Labour government, it should put this principle into policy</p>
<p>Then Jamie really went for it. He decided that Broken Britain need to reinstate the Ministry of Food, to teach everyone about the value of good nutrition.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30471/original/fsh6b7j2-1378090924.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30471/original/fsh6b7j2-1378090924.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30471/original/fsh6b7j2-1378090924.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30471/original/fsh6b7j2-1378090924.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30471/original/fsh6b7j2-1378090924.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30471/original/fsh6b7j2-1378090924.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30471/original/fsh6b7j2-1378090924.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has railed against the serving of junk food to schoolchildren through his popular TV programs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Julian Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By now, the young chef had become a recognised public expert, whose views mattered on a political level. And his vision was distinctly Labour: the free market was a culinary disaster, and state intervention from big government was good.</p>
<p>He doesn’t think that anymore.</p>
<p>Last week, Oliver <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/aug/27/jamie-oliver-chips-cheese-modern-day-poverty">surveyed</a> the failure of his visions, and decided that working class people are to blame. Young English kids can’t get decent jobs because they don’t like working. Eastern European migrants are happy to ignore workplace regulations and work all the hours God sends, and that’s why they get on. Poor families can still afford big TVs, so their cries of poverty ring hollow. Austerity Britain? Hardly. Oliver seems to agree with the adage, repeated by the likes of <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/95528-show-me-a-young-conservative-and-i-ll-show-you-someone">Winston Churchill</a>, about the inevitable path to conservatism that age and wisdom brings.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it could also be that Oliver has succumbed to the global philosophy of reality television. There is no format that better champions the spirit of ruthless individualism and, paradoxically, acceptance of authority. Reality television goads its participants to relinquish every right they have - privacy and dignity - in the pursuit of success. </p>
<p>This unedifying proclivity becomes especially vicious when it gets into the kitchen. To see how, let’s go to Hollywood.</p>
<p>Gordon Ramsay’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437005/">Hell’s Kitchen</a> takes Oliver’s idea - that successful people have to put up with hard work and the odd indignity - and strips it of any redeeming social value. Contestants are deliberately and routinely abused and humiliated. Behind the entertainment, the truth is that contestants are subjected to inhumane hours doing two jobs: making food, and making audiences laugh. But, hey, that’s their choice, right?</p>
<p>Wrong. The evolution of television cooking tells a stark political narrative. It’s the last chance saloon for the desperate, and hardly a good look for a politician. People can only get ahead by looking after themselves and not worrying about piffling matters like rights. You can’t help folks who don’t want to be helped. And if you want to succeed you should be ready to do and put up with anything. There’s <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/08/context-for-margaret-thatcher-s-there-is-no-such-thing-as-society-remarks.html">no such thing as society</a> in the kitchen.</p>
<p>That’s why Tony Abbott will look better in an apron.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/17724/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andy Ruddock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The penultimate act in this year’s election drama will be … a cook-off. This campaign has largely steered away from “entertaining politics”, but at the last hurdle, Messrs Rudd and Abbott have fallen for…Andy Ruddock, Senior Lecturer, Research Unit in Media Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.