This is a valuable element of our new democratised media system on which I can speak with specialised knowledge, having received all of the above feedback after a recent televised lunch with Scott Morrison, an event during which – to the disappointment of some viewers – I failed to stab my companion in the eye with a butter knife.

Now, I'm not bothered by the personal character assessment. I immediately disregard any remark that invokes Nazism in online discussions because experience tells me this is a prudent thing to do. I am quietly confident in my own heart (as are, I'm sure, all complete idiots) that I am not a fluff-head. But is a show like Kitchen Cabinet damaging to the political process?

Of the various critiques offered recently, some too spittle-flecked to warrant a courteous response, the most cogently-put and interesting came from TV reviewer Ben Pobjie in The Age:

"What a government minister is like at home – or in the kitchen – is irrelevant to the country: what matters is what they do. And the more we get to know them personally the more we fall for the lie that 'what they're really like' is important."

I can't agree with this. I don't think you can possibly separate what people are like from what they do. Political leaders – like every single one of us – are shaped by the things that have happened to them and to the people close to them. Those factors – what they're like – exert a considerable and usually invisible influence over the most important decisions a political leader will ever make. Namely: which issues they are going to choose to die in a ditch for, which they will pop in the too-hard basket, which they might compromise on. This is the stuff that realistically drives the political process. And fleshy, human, and deeply subjective stuff it is too. Knowing what a person is like is powerful. Why should it only be political journalists and insiders who get to see it?