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Annabel Crabb.
 It's a long way from the University of Adelaide to the Canberra Press gallery, thence to London, and thence to Adelaide again. Annabel Crabb leans back in the darkened cafe at the Hyatt, overlooking the Torrens, and considers her career thus far, most of as a political reporter for the Fairfax organization.
"I was a student politician, but only for a short time... I guess that side of it didn't really appeal to me," she admits, when I ask her to cast her mind back to early days. I knew her back then, and I'm pleased to see her astonishingly green eyes haven't lost their vibrancy, their interest in the world, or their ability to look amazingly quizzical. I can imagine her going through the range of expressions as she set about writing 'Losing It' and the story unfolded. Crabb was Women's Officer at Adelaide Uni Student's Association (her student political alumni include [now Senator] Natasha Stott-Despoja and dB Magazine Publisher Arna Eyers-White, so she's in fine company). Luckily she developed immunity of some sort to the political bug, so feels most happy reporting on events rather than participating. The idea comes back a little later when she protests (slightly) at being the interviewee rather than the interviewer, not being all together comfortable at the focus.
In any event, this potted history leads us to the publication of her first book, 'Losing It'. This is the sort of 'alternative history' you want alongside you as you're ploughing through the polemic and invective of 'The Latham Diaries', a touchstone of reality, as I describe it.
"In that way I was incredibly lucky that Latham came out with his book when he did," Crabb laughs candidly. "It also explains some things; when I was working on mine I'd emailed him on a few points and his responses were short and not a lot of help. He was hard at work on his [book] at the time and didn't want to give me any assistance." Unwittingly he's done a lot of Crabb's publicity for her over the past few weeks, a point she also cheerfully acknowledges... "he's done very well for me lately, hasn't he?"
I did get one thing wrong though; I'd assumed she'd written a recent history of the Australian Labor Party because of a sneaking admiration and empathy for them. As it turns out, her publisher approached her about writing the book, and by the time she began the writing she was already living in London, thousands of miles from the action - and putting the book together late at night - huddled in a dressing gown in her North London home making phone calls back to Australia checking facts and getting perspective for the story as it unfolded before her.
"It was really miserable in its own way, and I got so depressed at one stage because I couldn't see an end to it - to the book - and I started to think it would never be finished, and never have an end. Then in January when Latham pulled the pin on himself I though 'Oh yes', because I could finally see the end. It was a great feeling thinking I might be able to wrap it up."
She smiles as she admits a certain empathy for Latham and the position he found himself in, but seems somewhat taken by surprise when I ask her to name her favourite - and least favourite - federal politicians. Somewhat grudgingly she ponders. "Favourite... some of them not who you'd necessarily expect... Tony Abbott always thinks things through and gives it a go. He's not what you expect when you get to know him," she says, and qualifies what she sees as a significant admission for a political journalist. "Of course, I don't agree with a number of the views he holds."
Push her long enough on the 'least favourite' and she'll eventually drop the hedging... "I don't have a lot of time for [Wilson 'Iron Bar'] Tuckey," she says simply, not to my total surprise.
And Mark Latham? "I wasn't totally surprised when he quit. He'd stopped being the fun guy you could have a beer with quite some time before, and in some ways it seems like things were bothering him. Quite how it all turned out was the surprise though."
Alex Wheaton
 | Annabel Crabb's 'Losing It' is out now through Pan Macmillan books. |
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