130. The Prime Minister of Australia: Trump, China, and Social Media (Anthony Albanese)

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0:48Welcome to a very special live episode of The Rest is Politics Leading with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. And the reason it's special is because, as you can see, if you're watching on YouTube, we've got the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and he's right in the middle of the general election campaign, to which he's leading his beloved Labour Party against the right-wing Liberal Party, led by Mr Dutton, who's trying to oust him. And I think it's exactly two weeks to go. So we'll talk about the election, but there's also so much else going on in the world. China, Trump, AUKUS, Europe, relation, UK, climate.

1:27There's so much going on that we want to get through. But regular listeners know that we like to start with the backstory to our interviewees. And the man universally known as Albo owes that very name to a remarkable backstory. So first of all, welcome, but let's kick off with that. Just tell us the story of your mum and your dad, because it is a pretty remarkable tale. Yeah, thanks. And thanks, everyone, for joining us online or watching at a later time as well. It's a great pleasure to be able to talk to this audience, which has a very large following in Australia, along with other places as well.

2:10Well, I was born in 1963 to my mother, Mary-Anne, who travelled overseas, did the Australian journey, then by ship, the Fair Star. She travelled via what was then Singapore and Ceylon, and then through the Middle East to Southampton. there she met my father who worked on the ship Carlo and so I had a relationship. I came along in 1963 and my mother found that she was pregnant to him. he was betrothed to someone from his town in Italy. So she returned home. At that time, of course, in 1963, it wasn't acceptable to have a child out of wedlock. So the neighbourhood where she lived with her mother and father in a council house in Camperdown, which is in the inner city of Sydney, everyone was told that my father had died and that she was supposed to lose the baby in childbirth and I was to be adopted out.

3:40That was a very common thing particularly in the Catholic community but of course the nun at St Margaret's Hospital knew that she didn't want to give me up so I was brought into her and she wasn't about to let go of me. So I was born. I was told that my father was deceased until I was a teenager and when she thought I was old enough in my teens, she told me the true story. And so I did. I was 46 when I met my father. When she told me I was a pretty tough young kid, My mum was an invalid pensioner. She had rheumatoid arthritis. She was very crippled up with that, so she couldn't work. So my grandparents passed away when I was young, and there was just me and mum in the house, and she had a tough life, basically, but she gave me unconditional love and was a great mum.

4:48And so for me at the time, I was, well, he didn't want to know about me so I don't really want to know much about him. And that was the right thing to do by her as well in my view at the time to reassure her that she was enough in my life. So I didn't search for him at all until she passed away in 2002. In December of 2000, I was fortunate enough to have Nathan, our son, my then wife and myself had our son. And there was a day when I was visiting my mum's grave at Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney here. And my son said to me, it was a little boy, he was about five and he said, where's your daddy? and I realised that it wasn't fair on him to say, you know, I don't know because I didn't really know at that time.

5:50So it took a little while to find him but I was very fortunate. There were shipping records and I was able to find him in Puglia and travelled over in December 2009 to meet him and to meet now people I found was a half-sister and brother as well and nieces and nephews. And it was a wonderful completion of my life, of my identity and knowing of where I came from. He passed away in 2014, but in that brief period I got to engage with him and I took my son over to meet his grandfather in Easter, actually. We were there for Easter 2010 and I took him back another time as well. And he engages now with his cousins on social media and on Facebook, etc.

6:55And he's been over there independently as well to meet with his Italian relatives. Well, Prime Minister, just sort of very quickly at that, because we should get back onto politics and elections, but what is it like meeting your father for the first time when you were in mid-40s? I guess he was already quite an old man by then. What was his personality? What kind of guy was he? What surprised you about him? What were you not expecting? Did you see yourself in him? Well, I was the transport minister at the time and I had a meeting scheduled in Rome. We were trying to do an air services agreement between Australia and Europe.

7:34The European Union minister was Minister Tajani, who I'd met in Brussels and we agreed to meet in Rome. And so I had this visit to Rome scheduled and I contacted the family. They were a little bit cautious. I did it through an intermediary. I did it carefully and respectfully. I just said that my mother, Marianne Ellery, which was her birth name and indeed the name that she really had, was known to Carlo and that I'd be visiting on this day. Like I literally had a window that was ours. and so I wasn't sure what to expect but he walked in to, there was an intermediary solicitor friend of my brother's and he walked in and just put his arms out and embraced me and it was a wonderful chapter really in my life and it could have ended, you know, he could have said, I have no idea what you're talking about, I had no expectations, I made it clear through the intermediary I didn't want anything.

8:53I just wanted to meet the person who I thought was my father. So we had a meeting with the intermediary on the Saturday night and then Sunday morning we were able to connect. And it's interesting the way that genetics works. My son looks just like one of his cousins or did when they were younger. a not really no he was a seafarer he was a man of the world traveled the world from a relatively poor part of Italy of course I thought he was from Naples because that was what my mother had told me about them docking in Naples at one stage ended up he was on the other side of that beautiful part of Italy there.

9:50But he had lost some of his English, but occasionally it would be completely fluent. And so I could certainly see what my mother saw in him, but he'd lived a whole life with his family. They're lovely, warm, beautiful people, and they were very welcoming of me. It's a bit strange for them, I think, having someone across the other side of the world who's now the Australian PM But the world's a complex place and relationships are complex, as we know And was your mum political? I mean, you went into politics really young You were campaigning for Labour as a teenager I think you were an MP in your early 30s.

10:44Was she pushing you in that direction or was it the values that she gave you that pushed you in that direction? Where did the politics come from? Well, I say that I was raised by my mum with three great faiths, the Catholic Church, the Australian Labour Party and South Sydney Rugby League Football Club. And where I grew up in council housing, part of the culture really was that people went to church on Sunday. People went to the Labor Party branch on the second Wednesday or the first Monday of the month and they voted Labor. I don't think before I went to university I met anyone who admitted to not voting Labor.

11:25It was just part of the culture. And the council housing where I grew up and that then got sold to the state government and became state government public housing, My mum lived there for her entire 65 years of her life. She was spent essentially after all of 65 years, but it was very much part of the culture, so I would have been going along to branch. I mean, she never held a position in her life. She was a life member of the Labor Party because she was in it for 40 years and my grandfather was president of the Campdown branch of the Labor Party. They were just rank and file people. He was a printer, so he did a lot of printing for the Labor Party.

12:15He had his own printing business. My mum would have seen, I remember 1972, I was a little kid, but I do remember when Gough Whitlam won, it was seen after 23 years of conservative rule, it was seen as our team winning. and that was the way that everyone saw it in my local neighbourhood. But Primus, one of the things that's changing all over the world, but in Australia as well as Britain, is that when that election you've just described happened, 90 % of people voted for the two main parties. And we're now moving into a world where perhaps only 60 % of people vote for the two main parties. And we've had this very dramatically in Britain, but the polling in Australia seems pretty similar.

13:01What do you think is going on around the world, which means that we're moving from almost everybody going after two parties to increasing numbers of people pursuing different types of smaller parties? It reflects the economic and social changes which are there. When I grew up, I was taught, you know, you join the union when I started work at the local supermarket, Grace Brothers. you join your union, you vote Labor and that's what you do. And people's class position was more entrenched, less mobile as well, I think. And so that was part of the culture of what you do. Today, people have access to a range of views and the diversity.

13:54this podcast in itself is a part of that process of people getting information which is much more complex diverse from a range of different views and perspectives it used to be that everyone would watch abc news here or channel seven and they channel nine whatever the the their preferred Channel was and they'd read their daily newspaper of choice as well. And there was much more commonality. One of the things that's happening is fragmentation. And that can be a plus, but it also can lead to a fragmentation of political processes. And so I think it is pretty a natural result of those economic and social changes that we're seeing.

14:54And so many things going on. We've got the Teal independents, who people like me who tend to be pretty independent get excited by and enjoy visiting them in Sydney. But you've also entered an election in the age of Trump. And at least the perception from the United Kingdom is that if you win this election, it'll be partly thanks to Donald Trump, that your opponent, who felt that he was in a strong position, Peter Dutton, has now been completely thrown off course by the fact that that brand of right-wing politics suddenly seems slightly less fresh and exciting than it might have done three months ago?

15:35I think some of that can be overestimated. Peter Dutton is quite a conservative leader, to say the least. And one of the processes you've seen in the seats around Sydney Harbour is that your traditional conservative seats like Wentworth is one of the most expensive real estate areas in the world. And both North Head and South Head are now controlled by or represented by independent Teal candidates. Indeed, there are eight seats on Sydney Harbour. Five are held by the Labor Party and three are held by Teal Independence. And over a period of time, smaller Liberals have been pushed out of the Liberal Party.

16:31One of the things that I say is, you know, will the last moderate to leave the Liberal Party turn the lights out? It is a bit like that. So people who are economically conservative, they're certainly not pro-union, but they believe in climate change. They believe in gender equity. They believe in integrity in politics. We have committed to and done, delivered a National Anti-Corruption Commission here. They ran on essentially those three platforms and we have done all of those things. So I think that it's the Liberal Party has moved away from those moderates. And so we're seeing a different dynamic.

17:16And as a result, Peter Dutton was asked a question this week about the science of climate change. It wasn't really. It was a Dorothy Dixer really in a debate that we had. And he said, well, I'm not a scientist and there's different views. You're going to have to explain Dorothy Dixer, Albo. Oh, well, a full toss outside leg stump, how's that for a cricketing country? But it stumped him. It was rather strange given that we have, in Australia, we've just had this massive flooding event arising from a tropical cyclone in a non-tropical area of south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales. So I can't see the Teal independence losing what used to be safe, conservative seats.

18:24have you you you've um i watched a whole load of podcasts that you did in recent weeks and it was really interesting how some of the the question that the themes that kept coming through and one was this jibe that you're a weak leader kept coming through kept being part of the questioning now i just wonder i've always had a sense of australian politics as being pretty brutal It sure is. Yeah. And is that just part of the kind of, you know, the cut and thrust of politics? Or have you deliberately been trying to kind of soften the tone of politics? Look, one of the things that I said in the lead up to the 2022 election when we were elected was that people had conflict fatigue.

19:10They were sick of politicians shouting at each other. So I am someone who regards that business and unions, for example, have common interests. So one of the first things that we did was to legislate for net zero emissions and a 43 % reduction in emissions by 2030. and we had a mechanism, safeguard mechanism, which put simply is placing a limit, which then goes down each year on the biggest, the largest emitters, the institutions, so your coal-fired power stations or your mines or your aluminium refineries, et cetera. And so we had business and unions came together, all supported that legislation.

20:04I brought unions and business and civil society together to talk about jobs and skills in a summit at the end of 2022 as well. So I have consciously tried to bring people together and to reduce conflict. But in part, that's the style of Peter Dutton with his cheer squad in the media as well. We'll repeat those comments in order to try to undermine and to try to fit into what Peter Dutton thought was the zeitgeist, if you like, of strength, channelling some other world leaders we're seeing regarding almost, almost say I'm very disciplined, regarding bringing a machismo essentially to politics. And that is something that I think alienates the centre.

21:07And politics in Australia, we have a different system as well. We have compulsory voting and people do go and vote and there's record numbers on the electoral roll. You win elections from either the centre-left or the centre-right and I think what has happened, we'll see how it plays out over the next couple of weeks, but certainly Peter Dutton has gone out of his way to appeal to a right-wing base and there isn't too much that is there for the centre that can be seen as being moderate. Prime Minister, one of the things that I think people worry about in Australia and around the world is that the centre ground sometimes looks like it's slightly lacking energy and there's a general sense that housing prices will be too high, government is not as productive and efficient, immigration is too high and the center often communicates an impression that there's not a great deal it can do about it you know we we interviewed a man called ezra klein last week who was saying that the problem for the center left is it often ends up defending the government when it's indefensible when the right is always attacking the government even when it can be defended um how do you bring a sense of energy back so people don't feel just sort of generally slightly underwhelmed and disappointed in the sense that your government's been a bit disappointing and inert?

22:39By pointing out three things essentially has been our plan for this election campaign to defend our record of what we have done, to then say what we will do, what's the forward offer and we have related the measures that we've put in place on the forward offer have been very consciously ones that remind people also of what we have achieved in this term. And then, of course, the risk of Peter Dutton and the Conservatives. So whether it is getting inflation down, inflation had a six in front and it's now 2.4, we've done that importantly while creating more jobs than have been created by any government in history and a lower average unemployment rate than any government in the last 50 years.

23:35It's just 4.1%. And we've done it as well to break economic orthodoxy with real wages increasing. So real wages have increased the last five quarters in a row. So we are saying to people we have understood the need to deal with cost of living pressures, but we've done so in a way that hasn't caused contradictory positions of inflation going up. If we just pump money into the economy and did what some on the left would want us to do, then that wouldn't have achieved the outcome of looking after people. Inflation, of course, hurts the poor more than the wealthy. So we, I think, have achieved our economic objectives in the macro sense, while recognising though that many people are doing it tough.

24:35Global inflation has had an impact. We've had the biggest energy crisis since the 1970s. And so that's part of our pitch is we've done that whilst designing the cost of living relief that we've done. For example, cheaper childcare has helped families, but it also boosts productivity, it boosts workforce participation and it lowers inflation. We've got energy rebates. We put, we intervene in the market in a way that if you had said before the election, it would have seemed to be extraordinarily radical. We had a cap on coal and gas prices. But that was one we did in partnership with the Conservative government here in New South Wales, the largest state.

25:23So we have had three lots of energy rebates. We've introduced free TAFE that's reduced the costs of people doing their vocational education training courses, doing apprenticeships in traditional blue collar jobs where skills are required, but also in the care economy, aged care, childcare, disability care. Can I just jump in? That's benefited. Can I just jump in there? Because what you're doing, you set out, and we had, back in 2001, we had this framing for the election, lots done, lots to do, lots to lose. And it sounds to me that is your framing. I 100 % support that approach. but you also said you were very disciplined in that you talked about other strongmen leaders around the world and I just wonder you got Mark Carney in Canada probably going to win the election next week and will I think have Donald Trump to some extent to thank for that I just wonder whether you owe Donald Trump as well has Donald Trump changed the dynamic in the way that people are looking at Dutton and therefore the way that they're looking at you.

26:38And is that something you welcome or is it something you wish was not a factor in your election? I think it's far less. Canada obviously has a border with the United States and it's pretty brutal and upfront, that division that is going on there. You don't have the anthems being played in a way that's occurred at ice hockey games. in Canada. So it is more distant, but certainly the uncertainty that's there in the global economy and the world has an impact as well. And my government has been really determined as well to improve the relations that we have with ASEAN nations in our region, with the Pacific, with India, as well as we've restored the trade relationship with China.

27:36So I think there is a view that we have managed relations far greater. Historically, the Conservative parties have for a long time. They were dependent on the link with the UK And then the link with the US as well We regard both those relationships as important But the relationships in our region are also pretty significant Is China now more important to you than Europe, Britain, America? Well, China in trade represents almost one in four of Australia's exports as a destination. So if you compare that with the United States, for example, in the current trade issues, we have a 10 % tariff imposed in an act of economic self-harm by the US administration.

28:43but that represents less than 5 % of Australia's exports. So it, as a significant impact on our economy, we wish it wasn't happening and we were working it through constructively, but it doesn't have the same impact that the trade impediments that were there in China, which were worth over$20 billion to our exports had a severe impact on the Australian economy. Prime Minister, with all these tensions with America, there's now a lot of pressure in Europe to get from certain people to get much closer to China. I wonder whether you could find a way of explaining both the opportunities of China, but also being realistic about some of the risks, some of the things you need to be realistic about in dealing with China?

29:47This is part of the dynamic that has really changed with the election of the Trump administration as well. We have had strategic competition in the region between China and the United States and Australia chose a side a long time ago there and stands with democracies around the world. China has different values and that doesn't mean though that we can't engage constructively so my motto is that we'll cooperate where we can we'll disagree where we must and we'll engage in our national interest. Now part of the dynamic and it's not clear how it will play out in the region is that China has sought to exercise its influence in the region.

30:36The difference between Australia giving aid in the Pacific and China giving aid is that we do it without strings attached. We do it because it's the right thing to do, to uplift the living standards of disadvantaged nations in the developing world. And part of that is the mitigation of climate change, for example, has been a major element there. We have work visas in Australia to assist then to repatriate dollars back to places like Vanuatu and the Solomons and other nations in the Pacific. Now, China will tend to have things attached, so they'll build a police station but then say, oh, we need some Chinese security presence there in order to move forward.

31:28So it is an era of competition. Now, the United States' decisions to withdraw from aid and withdraw from Paris will have a real impact on the standing of the United States in the region. Now, Australia, we want to be the security partner of choice in the region and we'll continue to step up. But there's no doubt that any time the United States steps back, China will seek to step forward. And that is a strategic reality that we have to deal with. We have to deal with it in a mature way, in a considered way. And that's something that my government has been able to do. I went a couple of years ago, I gave the address at the Shangri-La Dialogue, the major defence and security conference held in our region, second perhaps only to the NATO summit in the world, really.

32:35And there I outlined very much Australia's position. That was in the context of the Biden administration, not the change that we've seen in our own region. Okay, let's take a quick break and then back for more Australia in a minute.

32:55When you were talking there about Australia relations with these other countries, you very consciously mentioned you stand with democracies. You've also been very, very strong in support of Ukraine. Russia is hard to defend as a democracy. How do you feel about the fact that we seem to be in a place where America is blaming Zelensky, siding with Putin, and now saying, having said he was going to solve this war in 24 hours, now saying that actually he might walk away from the talks? Are you as worried as some of the European leaders are? We are concerned, and I've been a part of the discussions that have been convened by Prime Minister Starmer and President Macron.

33:43And Australia does get engaged, even though it's a long way from us here. We've contributed over a billion dollars of military aid as well as other support. And we regard the struggle of President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people as being not just about defending their national sovereignty and defending their borders and their people. It is a struggle about the international rule of law and if Russia is allowed to get away with this breach of the law and with the atrocities that have been committed, the targeting of civilians, even in recent days we've seen it yet again, of a major missile attack and then they wait until the rescuers get there at a church service and then target again.

34:46So the rescuers, the people helping to provide medical support, the actions have been barbaric by Russia. We've called it out. We'll continue to put sanctions on and we'll stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes is our view. And I've said that. But what does it say about America and America's leadership in the world? They seem to be in this very, very different position to you, to Starmer to Macron to the new German Chancellor? Well, it's just a different dynamic. We'll wait and see what the relationship is between the US and NATO going forward. But I'm positive. I'm an optimist by definition.

35:36But one of the positive things that I've been engaged with over my time as Prime Minister as a call, It was very late on a Saturday night here in Australia. And so many of the world's leaders, including not just the European democracies, but also New Zealand, Canada and ourselves, were of common views and with that sense of common purpose. and I take heart from that, that the world just won't retreat and if the United States takes a different position, then people won't say, oh, well, that's the big country and therefore we'll change our position. I mean, Australia will determine our nation's position as a sovereign country and I've said that we're very open to if peace can occur, we of course want peace to occur there, and if there is a peacekeeping mission, then we would give consideration of being part of that coalition of the willing.

36:51Prime Minister, one of the things that's so exciting about visiting Australia is the sense that you are in this very dynamic, growing part of the world, while the rest of us feel a bit gloomy about things. Give us a sense of where the whole Asia-Pacific region could be in 20, 30 years' time. We talked a bit about China, but Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea, Australia. Give international listeners a sense of your region and where it could be going. Well, I am so optimistic about the future of this region. It's the fastest growing region in the world in human history. You have double-digit growth in so many countries for a lot of the past couple of decades.