Annabel Crabb’s Civic Duty review: snappily paced series explores how Australian voting works

Annabel Crabb: a familiar symbol of the political system

The ABC is the last Australian network to really be fully invested in the idea of general-purpose ‘personalities’. These days the commercial networks tend to discard hosts after their show is done – which may take forever if they’re on breakfast TV. But the ABC is constantly putting to air one-off specials and limited series that need a host, and for that they need familiar faces. Enter Annabel Crabb.

Crabb as host lets the audience know that they’re going to get politics, but not political. As a political reporter she’s not on the nightly news or 730 so she’s rarely associated with the actual goings-on in Canberra. Rather, she’s more of a symbol of the system itself, someone who covers politics via personalities and procedures rather than the parts that have any real relevance on our lives.

None of which is to say Annabel Crabb’s Civic Duty isn’t an important or relevant series; it’s just that, like pretty much everything she’s done since at least the frequently embarrassing Kitchen Cabinet, it’s an apolitical look at the political system – in this case, how voting works in Australia.

Watch Annabel Crabb’s Secret Duty trailer

Annabel Crabb’s Civic Duty: three episodes exploring Australia’s political system

Each of the three episodes focuses on a particular element of our political system. Episode one, unsurprisingly, looks to the past. There’s Australia’s enfranchisement of women in 1902, the adoption of preferential voting in 1918, and our world-first creation of an independent body to oversee our elections. Well done us! Well, apart from not giving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders the vote back in 1902 as was originally suggested.

Just in case you were wondering ‘why now?’ for this series, episode one also sees Crabb visit the American South to, as the press release tactfully puts it, ‘see what happens when electoral rules are left up to politicians’.

That’s not the last time we’ll get a blunt reminder that free elections are a fragile thing. Episode two looks at the way Australia’s political system is being disrupted – by new media as much as new political parties – while Crabb’s US tour stops in at the White House to see how the press corps has been reshaped by Trump.

Episode three is a reminder that voting is, at its most basic level, about people rather than parties – and if the people want change, it’s hard for parties to stand in their way. So is Australia heading for a future of minority governments, and would that be a bad thing? As always, it depends who you ask: there’s no shortage of interviews with politicians and experts scattered throughout the three episodes, so it’s not like their voices aren’t being heard.

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The obvious message this slick, snappily paced series is selling is that Australia, through a combination of luck and foresight, has ended up with a remarkably sturdy electoral system that prevents our politics from falling prey to at least some of the threats that have become increasingly obvious overseas. Or at least, it allows us to get on our high horse and look down upon the rest of the world for once.

Our system still has flaws, of course, but compared to others around the world – glances towards the USA – we’re doing better than most no matter what side of the political spectrum you find yourself. And there’s no better example of this than Crabb herself.

Annabel Crabb’s Civic Duty: middle-of-the-road educational programming

If Australia had a more overtly fraught political environment – if we somehow managed to replicate the USA’s divided state, where the overt support of one side or the other is increasingly required to stay in any part of public life touched by politics – Crabb as a host of this kind of middle-of-the-road educational programming would be untenable.

On one side of our politics there’s the clapped-out accusations that the ABC is somehow full of lefties, despite half their journalists and almost all their talking points coming from the Murdoch press.

On the other there’s Kitchen Cabinet. Amongst its myriad flaws, it gave us a look at Scott Morrison that was one of the more shameful examples of simplistic self-promotion of the era – one that, in the eyes of many, trashed Crabb’s credibility forever.

The real message here is that while our politics are as bitter and divided as anywhere, our systems are designed to tamp down those fires instead of inflame them. And as a supposedly apolitical symbol of those systems, loathed equally by those invested on either side but unaffected by their wrath, Crabb is the perfect host.

Annabel Crabb’s Civic Duty is a salute to the non-partisan nature of our political system. And there’s no more obvious example of the benefits of that system than Crabb herself. The series itself is yet another well-crafted explainer from the ABC; if you really want to know how politics in Australia work, it’s Crabb you want to focus on.

Annabel Crabb’s Civic Duty starts on ABC1 on Monday 10 November at 8.30pm AEDT, with all three episodes available to stream on ABC iview.

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