Just minutes after Leigh Sales told Bill Shorten rather bluntly to “wrap it up” on 7.30, Annabel Crabb turned up to share a homemade meal with Malcolm Turnbull at his daughter Daisy’s house.
With the TV advertising blackout kicking in the night before, the final episode of Kitchen Cabinet two sleeps before polling day had the potential to provide positive images of the prime minister being human.
And at first it delivered, as wife Lucy, Daisy and grandson Jack hung around the kitchen and Turnbull rolled up his sleeves and prepared his signature passata for the ABC’s cameras.
Jack provided the highlight of the show, revealing his name for his grandfather was “Baba”, throwing his arms adoringly around the prime ministerial neck and rolling around on the counter as dinner was being dished up.
Baba admitted he had used his authority as prime minister to encourage Jack to abide by the road rules. “I did a little video which we sent to each other on Whatsapp,” he said.
“In the video I said: ‘Now listen Jack, this is Baba speaking, I’m the prime minister and I’m telling you the law is that you have to hold Mummy’s hand when you cross the road with your scooter.’
“So that’s the extent of my prime ministerial authority with Jack.” Very cute.
But when Turnbull and Crabb sat down alone to chat over the ravioli and he declared being prime minister was ”the best fun I have ever had in my life” human Turnbull disappeared and the political returned.
“I inherited the whole range of things,” he told Crabb. “One of them was a very unfinished, partially conducted review of taxation. I felt that we should just leave everything on the table. We got a lot of flak for doing that. I think we could have done it somewhat differently. But the better approach ... is to just put it out there and let people digest it.”
Try as she did to elicit some straight talking from Turnbull as he grated parmesan onto her plate, dinner unfortunately descended into a lecture from the PM.
On being more comfortable as PM than opposition leader: “I’m better on the positive than on the negative side. I don’t shy away from making criticisms but I prefer to set out my positive agenda than pick holes in my opponents, that’s true. The opposition leader is almost entirely a professional critic and I think some people are better opposition leaders than they are prime minister.”
A dig at Tony Abbott’s relationship with Peta Credlin: “What you are seeing is what you get, which is traditional cabinet government, a government in which my principle advisers are my ministers, not powerful people in my office.”
His future after Saturday: “I’m not expecting to lose ... I would say I’m quietly confident that we will be returned.”
As they sat at the long dining table in the stark white minimalist kitchen, viewers could not have missed that this was a very posh eastern suburbs house, although probably the smallest one in the family.
The previous evening Shorten had shared a picnic with Crabb in a local park. Rugged up against the elements and tucking into an iced vovo tart, the opposition leader was probably a bit more relatable.
By the time Crabb served up her chocolate double miso-lution brownie, Turnbull’s cold had got the better of him and he completely missed the joke.
