Journalism Crabb undertook a cadetship at
The Advertiser in 1997. She moved to ''The Advertiser's
Canberra bureau two years later, having worked for The Advertiser
in both state and federal politics, before departing in 2000 to move to The Age'' as a political columnist and correspondent. Three years later she travelled to the United Kingdom and spent several years there working as the London correspondent for the
Sunday Age and
Sun-Herald and acting as an occasional and largely non-political correspondent for
The Sydney Morning Herald. During this time she wrote her first book,
Losing It: The Inside Story of the Labor Party in Opposition. Crabb returned to Australia in 2007 and started work as a senior writer and political columnist for
The Sydney Morning Herald and her opinion pieces featured in a regular column in the publication. During this time, Crabb served as a commentator for the ABC's coverage of the
2007 Australian federal election. Crabb took up a position with the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation in November 2009, working as its chief online political writer. She is also one of the presenters of
The Drum. In September 2014, Crabb's book
The Wife Drought was published, contributing to the debate about
work-life balance for women. In 2017, in a footnote to readers of her
Sydney Morning Herald column, Crabb implied that she had resigned from her role at that newspaper.
Television From mid-2012, Crabb and radio personality
Merrick Watts appeared in the ABC1 light-entertainment television program
Randling, as part of a team called the West Coast Odd Sox. Crabb has been a regular panelist on the
ABC Television political show
Insiders, a guest on panel shows such as
Network Ten's
Good News Week and the ABC's
Q&A. She was a panelist on the 2010 ABC federal election series
Gruen Nation. She returned to her role on the panel for the 2013 series. In 2012, Crabb began hosting her own TV program,
Kitchen Cabinet, on
ABC2 (later ABC1), an informal interview program with Australian politicians over a meal prepared by both Crabb and her guest. In 2017, Crabb hosted a six episode documentary series about the inner workings of
Parliament House called
The House. In 2018, she hosted a seven part series called
Back in Time for Dinner, based on the format of UK show
Back in Time for.... A family's home is transformed each week into a replica of a standard house from a different decade, with the family cooking and eating meals from that era. In May 2018, the ABC flew Crabb and
Jeremy Fernandez to
London to host coverage of the
wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Crabb wrote and presented a three-part documentary series for ABC Television called ''Annabel Crabb's Civic Duty'', broadcast weekly from 10 November 2025. The series includes a number of little-known stories about the history and evolution of the
Australian electoral system.
Chat 10 Looks 3 podcast In November 2014, Crabb started a
podcast with
Leigh Sales called Chat 10 Looks 3. It is independent of the work they do for other media outlets and is an opportunity for them to talk about books, movies, television, the media and culture. The podcast won two awards at the 2019 Australian Podcast Awards in the “Literature, Arts & Music” and “TV, Film & Pop Culture” categories. Described by Sales and Crabb as shambolic and peripatetic the podcast episodes are recorded every two to three weeks. "The podcast has spawned livestream shows in Australian capital cities and a book titled
Well Hello published in September 2021. Self-proclaimed “chatters or chatterati” have formed a
Chat 10 Looks 3 community on social media platforms built around the same tenets as the podcast – friendship, kindness, and an agreement to not discuss politics. Crabb has said “somehow, through word of mouth, this vast community has formed, bringing terrible humour and good book recommendations and the salve of human kindness to what turns out to be quite a big audience for that kind of stuff". ==Political views==