🦐 EXCLUSIVE CHAT: Annabel Crabb

The fantastic Annabel Crabb joins Jonesy & Amanda for a chat, and to talk about her new book, 'There's a Prawn in Parliament House'. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
My Heart podcasts here, more Gold one on one point
seven podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Playlists and listen live on the Free iHeart app. Jersey
and Amanda jam Nation.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Annabel Krab is one of Australia's most recognizable journalists and presenters,
an award winning political writer, a much love member of
our ABC. This is just to name a few of
her accomplishments. She's put her aufa hat on once again.
It's a new book for kids, but I've just been
flicking through it and I think there's a lot for
adults too. It's called There's a Prawn in Parliament House. Annabel, Hello, Hello,

(00:42):
prawl in Parliament.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
I know there's lots of crabs a well, I mean yes,
I'm drawn to exoscletal creatures. It is true. If you
walk into Parliament House through the big doors at the front,
there's a big marble hall. It's called the Marble Foyer,
and it's got a shiny kind of floor, highly polished,
and in one of the blackbits of this sort of
Art deco detailed floor, there's a little twenty cent coin

(01:07):
sized fossil. Right, he's three hundred and fifty million years old.
And now you can go and visit him. He's so cute.
He's a bit of a tourist attraction. He's got a
fringement magnet in the Parliament House shop and his name's
Sean Brawn, that's his nickname. Anyway, I have been thinking
about how to write a book for kids that talks

(01:29):
to them about the Parliament, how it works, the idea
of democracy, how Australian systems work, which is like our
system is unique in the world, right, like we are
one of a very small number of countries that enforces
compulsory voting, with the only country that uses preferential voting,
you know, where you fill in.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
All the boxes just king one.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
That's right, because like the US, the UK, they just
use first past of the post where you just only
pick one candidate. We like to fill out all the
boxes so that we can say we really hate as
well as what we really like and anyway, that is like,
that's us. Nobody else does that coast to coast the
way we do. We also in the idea of having
an independent electoral commission run elections. We did that in

(02:15):
the eighteen fifties. We also invented the secret ballot method
of voting the first election that happened in Australia was
here in Sydney in eighteen forty three and voting was public.
This was like the British model at the time. And
what would happen is the candidates would turn up and
make speeches and buy beers for voters. You could only

(02:35):
vote if you were a man who owned property, and
everybody got horrendously drunk and you had to say out
loud how you were voting for, so that the candidates
would know if their bribes had worked. Right, right, that's
a lot of people just yelling stuff out. Yeah, and
someone was stabbed to death, like there was a riot.
There were like it was wild. But then in Australia

(02:57):
we went, hey, we're not really cool with my boss
or my neighbor looking over my shoulder and knowing how
I'm voting. I'd rather do it in private. So we
invented the secret ballot, and we invented all the little
private booths, you know, the segmented polling booths. Anyway, look, Australia,
our political history is full of these stories about amazing people.

(03:19):
Some of them were kind of you know, venal, and
they made changes for their own like self preservation, like
The reason why we have preferential voting, for instance, is
because Billy Hughes introduced it in nineteen eighteen because he
was really worried he was going to lose because the

(03:40):
Conservative vote was being split between the Country Party and
his Conservative Nationalist parties, Like, how do I say my bacon?
I know, preferential voting. That's why all that way the
Conservative vote can kind of stick together. And he did
save his own bacon, but not for all that long.
And also that's the same system that eventually costs Scott

(04:00):
Morrison government one hundred years later. So it kind of
a circle of life. It is a circle of life.
And the other thing about Billy Hughes, he also invented
the Australian Federal Police while he was Prime Minister. And
he did that because someone threw an egg at him
at a public rally in Warwick in Queensland, and he
was so annoyed that he went to draw his pistol

(04:23):
that he used to carry in his coat, but then
sadly remembered that he had left it on the train.
The pistol, so he ordered a local Queensland copper to
arrest this egg thrower, and the copper who hated him
because he was a labor type. Wouldn't do it. Wouldn't
do it. And Hughes said, I instruct you to arrest

(04:44):
this guy. I wouldn't do it. So Hughes went home
and said, I am inventing a federal police force because
the state coppers won't do what I say. Wow, that's
why we have the aff.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
And that was that was egg boy two point zero right.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
I mean, what is it with throwing food at politicians
in Australia. Let's not get carried. It's always great to
talk to you.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
There's a prawn in Parliament House is out available now
and all good bookstores.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Annabel Crap, thank you for joining us. Thank you,