Journalist and television present, Jan Fran, has taken to Instagram to express her opinions following Peter Dutton‘s appearance on ABC’s Kitchen Cabinet, hosted by Annabel Crabb.
The show sees Crabb breaking bread with powerful figures across the Australian political gamut, with its informal setting creating a framework for more personal conversations that the public may not otherwise be privy to.
Dutton, leader of the Opposition of Australia, featured in a recent episode, stirring mixed responses from audiences, including Fran, who critiqued the episode in a ten-part carousel on her Instagram, aptly titled “Some Thoughts About Peter Dutton on Kitchen Cabinet”.
In the post, Fran commented about the “curious” juxtaposition between recounts of Dutton’s “rather jovial” nature, as seen in the Kitchen Cabinet episode, compared to his “hard line in policy and rhetoric.”
Fran wrote: “The duality is interesting, I suppose. But then I think, who cares?”
She continued, “This is after all a man who walked out of an apology to Stolen Generations, who voted no on same-sex marriage, who in 2016 said bringing Lebanese people to Australia was a mistake, whose department tried in 2017 to stop a suicidal ten-year-old boy from seeking treatment in Australia, who in 2018 said Victorians were afraid to go outside because of African gangs, who in 2019 called the Bileola children ‘anchor babies.'”
Commenting on the nature of the ABC show, and calling into question its “raison de etre”, Fran remarked, “Who actually cares about the ins and outs, the niceties of these people living outside of Canberra?
“And for those who do care, might they not be able to find that information amid the slew of curated content from the politician’s PR team? This is a genuine question.
“Any tough questions asked amid such a framing are like punching someone in a room made of marshmallows. Why bother?”
At the conclusion of her post, regarding the PR traps that audiences have to contend with, as well as her “particular” interest “who journalists platform, when and why,” Fran advised: “It might be, for the purposes of a public-facing interview anyway, better to just assume that every single one of them (politicians) is an infernal lizard ghoul who lives in a bin and go from there.”