ABC star Annabel Crabb is forced step away from social media and defend interviewing Peter Dutton after left-leaning fans accused her of helping to get Scott Morrison get elected by ‘humanising’ his image on Kitchen Cabinet

Kitchen Cabinet presenter Annabel Crabb was forced to defend her interview with opposition leader Peter Dutton on the show after fans accused her of running a ‘sycophantic puff’.

The veteran ABC star faced a flurry of criticism before Tuesday night’s episode starring the leader of the Liberal Party even aired, with some left-wingers raising concerns that Crabb will ‘humanise’ Dutton in the same way she did with Scott Morrison.

Appearing on the show in 2015, the former prime minister, known for his tough image and strict immigration policies, was able to polish up his image as a family man by cooking “scomosas” and a Sri Lankan curry.

Now, just hours before the interview with Mr Dutton was due to air, Crabb felt compelled to defend her choice of interviewee in a lengthy Instagram post.

She flaunted her pride in the seventh series of the show, which features a mix of home cooking and friendly conversations between herself and politicians on the front lines, claiming it is the “most diverse yet.”

“Of course I always went to interview the opposition leader if he was willing,” Crabb wrote.

‘I asked both major party leaders, and Peter Dutton said yes to both of them. He is the alternate prime minister.

Crabb said she “took the same approach I’ve taken in each of the 48 episodes my team and I made”.

“I show up and bring dessert, and I ask the host questions about my host’s life,” she said.

“Sometimes viewers like them more at the end of the show, sometimes they don’t. The most important thing is that the viewer decides for himself.’

“That’s how things roll in a democracy.”

The ABC fanatic revealed that she would be taking a break from social media in the wake of the outrage.

Last week, Crabb suffered a backlash describes Dutton’s politics as “muscular” during a promotional interview for Kitchen Cabinet op ABC news.

An angry viewer tweeted: “I don’t need a sycophantic puff to make Dutton ‘reveal’ something about himself. Every hateful word and every deed has revealed everything I need to know about him.”

Some viewers even went so far as to say that Mr Dutton’s appearance means Kitchen Cabinet should be taken off the air.

‘Kitchen cabinet may not be extended for another season. It is indefensible to humanize a politician who is manipulatively trying to secure a No vote,” one complained, referring to the Liberals’ opposition to the Native Voice proposal in the upcoming referendum.

Last week, Crabb defended herself against allegations that she offered her interviewees a “free ride.”

“I interview them in a way that’s different from your Sarah Ferguson boot-on-the-throat variety, which is absolutely necessary for our democracy, but I also sometimes think that if you take a different approach, especially if you’re like when you’re at someone’s house, you’re polite to them, and you don’t throw things at them,” she said.

“But if you let them feel comfortable enough, they’ll often reveal things about themselves that are actually quite interesting and essential to understanding them, and I think that’s certainly true of Dutton’s episode.”

Her nuanced approach has done little to appease her staunchest critics.

A 2015 article entitled ‘Junk Food Journalism: Why Annabel Crabb’s Kitchen Cabinet Is Toxic’ has resurfaced in the wake of Mr Dutton’s upcoming appearance on the show.

Amy McQuire, who wrote the piece, accused Crabb of “making her way through interviewing some of the most powerful people in Australia by icing their numerous acts of structural violence.”

“This insidious spread of propaganda, soft interviews with hardline politicians wielding enormous power over the lives of the most vulnerable, is being sold as a fun, light-hearted look into the lives of the people we elect,” Ms McQuire wrote.

“But this taxpayer-funded sycophantic date with power will end up making us all sick.

“It completely obscures the debate and re-establishes the perception that politicians are like us, when the people their policies hurt are not.”

Other critics went even further, mocking an image of Crabb sitting smiling at a dining table next to Adolf Hitler.

It comes amid reports of Crabb confronting Mr Dutton on the show over so-called ‘racist remarks’ he made as the pair share a slice of custard with brown butter and rum.

Mr Dutton made the relevant comments in 2016, alleging that Malcom Fraser’s government made a mistake in resettling Lebanese refugees in the 1970s.

At the time, he defended the comments, claiming that “of the last 33 people charged with terrorist offenses in this country, 22 of those people have a second- and third-generation Lebanese Muslim background.”

“I don’t understand how you can look at that, apart from that it’s a racist comment,” Crabb tells the Conservative politician on Kitchen Confidential. news.com.au.

Mr Dutton admits he should not have made this comment and says he has apologized for it before.

Outside of MrDutton, Kitchen Cabinet’s final season will feature a wide variety of political figures, including the National Party’s Bridget McKenzie and former Greens and now Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe.

Kitchen Cabinet is currently airing on ABC and can be streamed on iView.