Do we like Adam Liaw?
Our score: 7 out of 10. No harm and no scandal found, plus a real honour and open talk about discrimination, but the public record on his politics is thin.
Adam Liaw was born in Georgetown, Penang, to an English-Singaporean mother and a Chinese-Malaysian father. The family moved to Adelaide when he was about three, chasing more opportunities for the kids. He told SBS he feels “completely Australian”, while his parents stayed proud of their heritage.
The big break was winning the second season of MasterChef Australia in 2010, watched by more than five million people, after a career as a lawyer. He went on to present SBS's Destination Flavour from 2012, which earned a Logie nomination for Most Popular New Talent, and wrote cookbooks including Asian After Work.
The harm check came up clean. We found no remarks about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, no conspiracy-theory slide, and no run of films or projects with people who push harm. That's an absence of evidence, not a glowing character reference, and we couldn't find much of his politics either way.
What does exist points the decent way. In 2017 SBS reported that he spoke about his own brushes with discrimination around Harmony Day, and the headline quoted him saying “I cried a bit typing that”. That's a bloke using his platform to talk about something personal and uncomfortable.
On the good-person side, we found no lawsuits, convictions, allegations or complaints from co-stars or staff. He was named a Japanese Cuisine Goodwill Ambassador in 2016, the first time the title went to someone outside Japan. He framed it humbly: Japanese cuisine is close to him, “but it's not mine”.
Nothing new has turned up on him lately beyond his usual TV and cookbook work. Where it lands: a clean sheet on both tests, held back from the top marks only because the record on his wider views is thin.