195. Can the West Reclaim its Power from Trump? (Malcolm Turnbull)

28:34We don't sort of understand it. Quite puzzling for Brits, let me tell you. Yeah, I mean, I just don't, I can't understand why people are hung up. Let me put it this, to give you this example. So I've lived in Sydney, you know, all my life. No one in Sydney has ever asked me where I went to school since I ceased to be a schoolboy. I mean, you know, when you see a boy, little boy, you'll say, hello, Johnny, you know, where are you at school? What's your favourite sport? You know, do you like maths or something? You know, all these inane questions adults ask. Nobody's ever asked me that. I mean, you know, people have if they're interviewing you or, you know, really getting to know you.

29:14Whereas in Melbourne, interestingly, they do. and Lucy, my wife, who was Lord Mayor of Sydney at one point, was once asked about this difference. And Lucy said, well, the point is that the question in each case, in Sydney they ask you where you live, in Melbourne they ask you where you went to school. Each question is designed to put you in a social category, social context. The difference is you can never change where you went to school, but as to where you live, you could have bought a, you know, big house last week maybe if i was a melbourne and i would have found it more understandable but for me the interest in your antecedents and you know where you came from as opposed to what you're doing right now and what you're going to do tomorrow i found that curious it didn't worry but i found it curious but i i've had always had great affection for the uk and felt very much at home there although I was you know I did go through periods where I thought I might get thrown into a basement by MI5 over the Spycatcher case but I was going to come to that because you took on two of the sort of titans of 20th century British history Margaret Thatcher over Spycatcher and the Queen when you headed the referendum campaign to try and get rid of her so I just wonder what they both feel kind of very leftist anti-establishment kind of position so I wonder whether that was something that you sort of the seeds were sown when you were looking at this class system around Oxford yeah not really you know I I know I wouldn't say I mean the spy catcher case fell into my lap Alistair I mean Peter Wright had had written this book the British government had got an injunction to restrain it in Australia, which is where he lived.

31:07He'd had a big law firm advising the publishers that told him he couldn't win. Lots of QCs had said the same. And through a couple of connections, he ended up with me. And I'd just set up a law firm. You know, I'd been working for Kerry Packer for a few years, defending him legally. And then I had this law firm and he wandered in. And I agreed to do the case for$20 ,000, I recall. because I thought it was going to be really exciting and I thought we'd win. And that was an unfashionable view at the time and we did. So it was really just a stroke of luck. But to my astonishment, the Brits didn't settle and they fought it all the way.

31:46You know, they fought it all the way to a trial and, gosh, they fought hard too. I mean, we went to the Court of Appeal two or three times just on the interlocutory stages, you know, on the interrogatories and discovery. And they went all the way to the High Court. so but it was a great adventure 40 years ago this year by the way 40 years ago this year so tell us

32:07Rory Stewart:a little bit for the audience so my memory of this is peter wright had been an mi5 officer he wrote this book which was sensational or seemed to be a sensational tell-all about the inner workings of mi5 and allegations that senior mi5 officers might have been working with the russians and so from the point of view of the british establishment this guy was somewhere between a renegade and a traitor. And here he was wanting to publish a book and everyone was very disproving. You got on his side. So tell audiences that don't remember everything about it a little bit about this case. Okay, well, we're in a good position now because a lot of this stuff has now been published in the public records office.

32:43But the backstory was that Wright worked for MI5. He was, you know, essentially a mole hunter. And he was a technical guy originally, you know, was bugging embassies and bugging hotels and so forth. And he spent a lot of time, for example, debriefing Anthony Blunt and Cairncross, you know, who were two of the Cambridge Five spy ring. But he did develop an obsession, some might say an unhealthy obsession, that the one-time head of MI5, a guy called Roger Hollis, was also a Soviet agent. Anyway, this stuff about Hollis, he'd been agitating about this. By this stage, he's retired. He was put in touch with Chapman Pinscher.

33:29He, you'd remember, was a very conservative journalist who worked for papers like The Express and The Mail and so forth and wrote about espionage and was like an official conduit for the security agencies. And he was put in touch with Pinscher and Pinscher wrote a book about it called Their Trade is Treachery, which got all the Hollis stuff out in the public domain. and then he wrote a second book called Too Secret Too Long, which did the same. And so when Wright wanted to publish his book, in fact, pretty much everything had already been published by Pinscher. So one of our arguments was, well, many arguments, but one of the arguments was this stuff is not confidential anymore.

34:13And what was worse was that the publication by Pinscher had actually been connived in by the British government. Not only had they known Pinscher was about to publish his book and did nothing to restrain it, but in fact, as we now know, through documents that have come out in the public records office, Sir Robert Armstrong, who was Thatcher's cabinet secretary, as you recall, had actually recommended to Thatcher that Pinscher be briefed on the Hollis allegation so that it could be got out through the pen, effectively, of a safely conservative journalist. So the The spycatcher case is also about the extraordinary hypocrisy of the British establishment.

34:55I mean, Armstrong came to Australia and lied in the witness box. You know, I couldn't get the judge to accept that he'd committed perjury, but he had to correct his evidence. He had to apologise to the court for misleading the court. He had that, you know, one-liner, which he thought was funny. Economical with the truth. When I put to him some correspondence he'd written, which was misleading, where I said, this is a lie, and, you know, he said, no, no, I was just being economical with the truth. Ha, ha, ha. And, of course, you know, just memo to self, last place to joke about telling the truth is in a witness box when you're under oath.

35:33People, everyone doesn't think it's funny. But, in fact, I put to Armstrong that the brief, that Pinscher had been effectively set up to do this, write this stuff about Hollis. And I might say the person who introduced Wright to Pinscher was Victor Rothschild. So you can see why you can develop a few conspiracy theories here. So I put to Armstrong that Pinscher had been brought into this with the connivance of government. And Armstrong said, that is a very ingenious conspiracy theory, Mr Turnbull, but utterly untrue. Sorry, but quite untrue. Paused and then said utterly untrue, just to be quite clear.

36:16In fact, it was utterly true, as Charles Moore acknowledges in his official biography of Thatcher. And, you know, as anyone can see, if you look at the memos in the public records office, there's actually a memorandum. It's quite quaint, really. He says to Thatcher, he says, ordinarily I would recommend dealing with someone like Mr Pinscher with a very long spoon. However, on this occasion, I think we should... And they got a guy, you might remember him, called Lord Rawlinson, who'd been Attorney General, I think, at one point, who's a barrister, to be the cutout. And he was given the stuff on Hollis and briefed Pinscher and then Pinscher was put in touch with Wright by Victor Rothschild.

37:01And so part of our case was this is just a whole lot of hypocrisy. Did you buy into at all Peter Wright's suggestions that the security services were deliberately undermining the government of Harold Wilson? I couldn't look there's no doubt that Peter Wright I think some of them certainly had that view I don't know I couldn't go that far Alistair right but there was definitely a view in the in those intelligence community circles that Wilson was if not a Soviet agent at least very close to people who were, who were, you know, connected to the, you know, Soviets. So yeah, I mean, it's a, it was a, it's a very dark and murky part of your history.

37:48And I mean, I think part of the problem with spooks, and we've all dealt with them over the years in different capacities, is that when people are living in a secret world, it is, it is very, very easy to develop conspiracy theories and to become very, very conspiratorial. I mean, I had an experience with this when I was first, you know, a very young lawyer before Spycatcher, when I defended Kerry Packer. I remember in the early 80s, he was accused of all sorts of crimes, you know, murder, drug trafficking, a whole lot of stuff by a royal commission that had gone really run off the rails and had all these secret hearings.

38:32And, you know, again, there's a lot of books written about this, and it was bonkers. But it's the kind of thing that happens. So that's why, you know, you need, that's why sunlight is so important. It's why transparency, oversight is so critically important. And, you know, whenever governments are saying, oh, it's classified, you can't look at this, you can't look at that, I accept some things have to be classified. but there is so much that goes on. Once you put that veil of secrecy over it, there is so much crazy stuff that will go on underneath that cloak and which, of course, can end up misleading government but also doing a lot of injustice.

39:14And you led the Republican campaign, and I think it was Paul Keating. Was he prime minister who put you in charge of that effectively? Looking back at that, do you think that was the closest Australia ever got to becoming, as it were, a constitutional republic without our head of state as your head of state? And do you think that battle has gone forever? It's certainly the closest we've got to date. I don't think it's gone forever. I mean, it was, you know, unfortunately, in our system, I mean, we've got a couple of things in our electoral system, which I strongly commend to you in the UK, strongly commend to you.

39:51Compulsory voting. Compulsory voting. and preferential voting. I mean, if you guys don't move to both or at least preferential voting, you will end up with a democracy with very little legitimacy because you'll have more and more people winning constituencies with a plurality of, you know, 20 % or something like that. I mean, it's just... I think it's with a five-party system plus smaller parties and independents, first past the post doesn't work. But anyway, the problem that we have with referendum is that they need to be approved by a national majority and a majority in four out of six states.

40:33And we have compulsory voting for them as well. And in a compulsory voting environment, the people that don't know, don't care, aren't interested, who would normally stay at home, are the ones that will vote no. And so every referendum campaign, Albo went through this with the Voice campaign a few years ago. Every referendum campaign, the no votes say, if you don't know, vote no. And people do. And so we got, I think we were about 46.5 % yes and balance no, so that's why we lost. But yeah, I mean, look, it's, I mean, our constitution, you've got to remember Australia was not an independent country in 1901.

41:15Australians saw themselves as part of Britain. And in fact, they saw themselves as part of Greater Britain for a long time after that. So, you know, if Britain became a republic, if Rory became the president of the Great British Republic. He would never get rid of the monarch, never. I understand if Charles was going to abdicate for anyone, it would be for Rory. I've got the inside word from the palace on that. OK, Malcolm, Rory, quick break and then back for more. Hi, this is Gary Lineker from Goalhangers. The rest is football.

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44:12Rory Stewart:Let's now go right into the heart of Australian politics. And this is massively oversimplifying, but it does seem as though Australia has begun to take some of the disease that Britain, Europe and the United States has had. Alastair and I were cheerfully going around three years ago saying, thanks to compulsory voting and all the rest, Australia is never going to have a populist movement. And we even had a line where we'd say they're so lucky they've got this person, Pauline Hanson, as the head of One Nation. If they had, you know, genuinely kind of talented, charismatic politician, they'd be screwed, but they don't, right?

44:49Rory Stewart:Fast forward three years, now we're looking at a situation in which, as we're interviewing you, One Nation, which is, I don't know how we want to describe it, but it's a sort of version of the far right. It's somewhere between MAGA and, I don't know, the Reform Party, is now regularly polling up into the 30 percents. And the two main cornerstone parties, the equivalents, the mainstream right and left parties in Britain or France, are down in the 20s. And you're now facing, I guess, the same challenge with the right, which Kemi Baden-Ock or I would be facing with the Conservative Party in Britain, which is, how on earth do you work out how to deal with this?

45:29Rory Stewart:Are you going to tack to the right, which might be the kind of Tony Abbott view, or you're going to tack towards the teals, which might be your view. Am I right, just before we get into the details of how you do in Australia, am I right that in some sense Australia is now catching a global disease? It's too early to say definitively, but there are signs that we have. You've got to be careful about, you know, opinion polls, as we all know, tell you what people think on the day the poll is taken. and people are very sophisticated about opinion polls and they'll say things to pollsters intending to send a message, right?

46:08So I don't think Pauline Hanson's going to be the next Prime Minister of Australia. I might be proved wrong. I hope I'm not proved wrong. But I don't think she is. Our system of voting does tend to bring people to the centre and I agree with you that One Nation looks like a counter-argument there. The One Nation support is very linked to the, you know, you can all get stuffed sort of anger that is being, you know, promoted through a lot of the right-wing media, particularly Murdoch's media, where we have an equivalent of Fox News here called Sky News. I mean, it's not very different to the Sky News in the UK.

46:50It's about to change its name, in fact, to remove that confusion. So I think there's that sort of angry attitude that's part of it. But I think Labor will win the next election. And I think they will win it because they will say a vote for Hanson or a vote for the Liberal Party or the National Party is a vote for Hanson. And they'll say, do you really want Pauline Hanson to be running your country? You may think she's courageous and blunt and says it like it is and authentic, but do you actually want her running the show? You see, the curious thing that's happened in our system, and I was in the House of Commons recently, actually, the week of the King's speech, and I was fascinated to see some elements of the debate there and see Starmer and Badenoch perform.

47:46But the interesting thing here is that we basically have only got one major party left at the centre. That's the Labor Party. See, the Liberal Party was, you know, as you guys know, you said it earlier, always my problem in the Liberal Party was always the right wing of the party. I'd never had a lot of, I mean, the Labor Party were my political opponents, obviously. But my problems were always with the right wing of the party, with the Murdoch media. And after I left, it kept moving further to the right. And what they have been doing is essentially trying to echo and emulate the right wing populist arguments that One Nation is putting.

48:34And the problem is the more you do that, the more you validate and legitimise the right wing populist. So if you're a centre-right party and you run off to the right and you say, right, mass migration is the issue, that's mass migration is the issue, then people will say, OK, well, if that's the issue, I'll vote for the real deal, Pauline Hanson in Australia or Nigel Farage in your country. And so if you're a centre-right party, again, you know, you guys have got, you know, just as much political experience as me, but, you know, if you're a centre-right party, My view is your only real political equity is economic management.

49:14You've got to steer down the centre and focus on economic management and say to people, well, you may not think we're as, you know, good on the environment or health or schools as the left. But, you know, we'll do a reasonable job there. But we will make sure the government's solvent. There's more money in your pocket. You know, your kids can get a job. That's your strength. And see, what's happened here is the Libs have run off to the right, and so they're just bleeding votes. They've lost about half their vote to Hanson. You know, Labor's had lost a bit based on the polls, but the bulk of that loss has come from the traditional centre-right parties, and I think they're digging their own grave.

49:57Now, interestingly, I discussed this very phenomenon with Farage, your parliament recently. and Farage agreed with me and he said this is the mistake Badenock's making so you know you'd be better judges of that than me. It's interesting you said you thought Labour will win and because what you've described there take out compulsory voting where both Roy and I agree with you and preferential voting as well but take that out I'm one of the few people around at the moment who still thinks actually Labour will probably win the next election here because a lot of the same things are applying. But I just wanted to ask you, with all your political experience, what you think is happening in British politics right now, that Keir Starmer has gone from leading Labour to a landslide two years ago to now, possibly by the time this interview comes out, be facing a challenge to be spilled out of office, as you guys like to call it.

50:49Well, look, again, you've forgotten more about this than I'll ever know. So accept this with all humility. I find Starmer a very unusual guy. I mean, I don't know him, okay? But I find him singularly unpersuasive and lacking in political eloquence. And I had an interesting experience of that in the House of Commons. After the King's speech, as you know, there's an address in reply. It's moved by two government backbenchers, and then the opposition leader speaks, and then the PM. And I was in the public gallery watching this. It was interesting. Badenock gave a good speech. I mean, she tailed up the Prime Minister, which is what you do when the opposition leader is.

51:38You're just, I've done that job, horrible job. And then Starmer rose to his feet. The house is packed. It's full of energy. There's a bit of excitement in the air. and reading from a prepared text for several minutes, he speaks solemnly, gravely about the stabbing of the Jewish person at Golders Green and the evils of anti-Semitism. Now, I don't think there was anyone in the house that disagreed with the word that he said, right? The sentiments were absolutely correct, but you could just feel the energy draining out of the chamber. You could feel it being flattened. And then, having got those remarks off his chest, he then tried to rev things up and counterattack against the opposition, which, of course, he couldn't do because everyone was as flat as attack.

52:40And all I could think to myself was, this is a speech that's been written. He's reading. You know, truthfully, the Prime Minister should not read a speech like that. He should be able to speak extemporary. But he's reading that. So somebody has thought that's a good idea. Now, you tell me, Alistair, you've written speeches for Prime Ministers. Why on earth would that have been done? It seemed to me as though he was trying to do himself in. To me, I think Labour's biggest problem is, you know, a lack of, I don't know, sort of inspiring leadership. And it's, I mean, that's a tough thing to say. Do you think he's done?

53:20Is your sense of having been here and seen him? Honestly, I don't know what the numbers are. I have no idea. And as you know, you know, politics is a relative business, right? I mean, people may not like him, but if they don't like the other people, if they dislike the other people more, he'd still get up. But I don't understand. I mean, you tell me, you tell me and Rory, I'm sure you've talked about it before, but how could someone get to be leader of the Labour Party, to be a Queen's Council, an advocate, a barrister? And, you know, I've done all of those things. I haven't been leader of the Labour Party, of course, but I'm leader of a political party and I've been a lawyer.

53:56How can you do those jobs and not be a better communicator? That's the thing I can't quite understand. Well, I think the answer is probably that he wasn't a politician for a long time. He probably thought for most of his life he's going to be a lawyer forever. And then he came to politics quite late. And I think he probably sees himself as being an antidote to a politics he thought was being rejected. Boris Johnson, Trump, flamboyance, etc. But I agree with you. Sometimes when I see him communicating, I have that sense. We're talking on the morning that Keir Starmer has announced a ban following the Australians in the ban on social media for under 16 year olds.

54:36And he delivered it with, you know, real passion, but reading it. And if I could just imagine him saying the opposite with the same sort of passion, that maybe leads people to think I'm not quite 100 % sure what he really. believes where I've always felt that, you know, I said Keating was one of my heroes. I never, ever, ever doubted when Paul Keating spoke what he thought. Oh, yeah. And like, you know, talking to you now, you're answering every question very, very directly. I know it's easier when you're out of office than in. But so I think it's that. It's a kind of lack of certainty about what the inner core is probably.

55:13Yeah, I had an interesting experience in this sense with Bill Shorten, who I'm sure you've met. Yeah, yeah, I remember Bill Shorten, yeah. Bill was the Labour leader and he, when I was PM, and Bill, you know, I must have given a hundred speeches where Bill spoke after me, you know, and set his engagements in the House or elsewhere. And very often he had a better speech than me and someone had written something for him that was really good and, you know, I pay attention to that and I was thinking to myself, that's a great speech. But he was never really able to deliver it with any conviction. And his critics, the most intense ones, of course, were in his own party, would say he was a man of no conviction.

55:58But that wasn't true. Yeah. It's just that somehow or other, he'd got himself into, and I've seen this with a few politicians, where they're sort of trying so hard to be what they think somebody thinks a politician is, that they sound like a politician and don't sound like themselves. So like this is Trump's super strength, for example. He is utterly authentic. I mean, wild, crazy, exaggerated, he may be, but it is very authentic. You know, nobody's written those lines for him, right? I'm not suggesting Keir Starmer should try to channel Donald Trump, but I think if people feel you're not authentic, or maybe he's authentically, you know, bland, I don't know, But it's a real challenge or authenticity.

56:49And this is, you know, this is why Pauline Hanson, this is what people like about Pauline Hanson. They think she's very authentic, very real.

56:56Rory Stewart:Anthony Albanese has won this election. It seems a bit loveless. His net popularity is not great. And he's playing around with capital gains tax and stuff. And there seem to be two views on the future of Australia. One of them, I guess, is the Labour view, which is Australia is doing just fine and it can afford to raise more taxes. and there would be another view which is that maybe Australia can't sit on its laurels and it did well after 2008 and its economy often looks quite impressive but actually there does need to be very fundamental reform pro-business reform tax reduction some of the kind of centre right arguments that you used to make give us a sense of where Australia in your view needs to be in the next 5 10 15 years and how you would differ from Anthony Albanese well I mean I you know I was all about innovation, lower taxes, encouraging investment.

57:48I'm not the first politician to run on a platform of jobs and growth, but that's what it's all about, ultimately. And I think that you can have academic arguments for tax reform that make sense somewhere in the Treasury, but you've actually got to ask yourself, what is it going to do to people who are making investments, taking risks, hiring people. You know, one of the problems with politics, this is really a big problem with the Labor Party. It's a problem with both parties, but the big problem with Labor is that there are very few people there with any business experience, much life's experience.

58:28I mean, when I was a kid, when I was working as a political journalist in the New South Wales State Parliament, when Neville Rand was the leader of the Labor Party, Most of the Labor members who were trade unionists had worked. They were bricklayers, they were plumbers, they were engine drivers, you know, boilermakers. They were people who'd worked. But now those that have worked for trade unions, university graduates who have had jobs, you know, as officials have never actually worked. I mean, I used to goad them in the house. I used to say, you know, as far as, you know, the Labor members are concerned, manual Labor is a Mexican bandit.

59:09You know, they hadn't encountered it. And I think you get a lack of sort of real-world understanding of how the real world operates in politics. And I think it's a problem. I couldn't say how big a problem it is in the UK, but it's certainly a problem in our system. So, yes, we can always be more innovative. We're a small economy. We've got to be innovative, competitive, all of those things. Innovation and science was a huge part of my economic agenda. And, you know, I think that was something that really worked. But look, we're doing pretty well on the clean energy transition, for example. You know, the climate change deniers notwithstanding.

59:53We've got the biggest penetration of rooftop solar in the world, massive rollout of storage. You know, we've obviously got the big Snowy 2 project I started underway. way, but thousands and thousands of batteries all around the country. We are making, for a country that had been hitherto totally dependent on fossil fuels, we're making a very big, a successful transition to clean energy and demonstrating, and this is an important point, electricity prices have been coming down. And they're coming down because solar and storage is cheaper. And so, So, you know, when I was John Howard's environment minister 20 plus years ago, you know, I was having to argue that we needed to pay more to save the planet.

1:00:41Now we're in a happy position that the renewables are actually cheaper. And, you know, so we're doing well with that. I'm not letting Rory come back on that because he's slightly moving to the dark side on climate. And you and I have got to fight to bring it back. Listen, I want to close, Malcolm, by just I've always really liked Australian politics. I've always liked the kind of toughness of it. But if I just go through, I was reading up on you last night, and if I go through your kind of career, you're there talking about Keir Starmer, and yes, we've had lots of prime ministers since Brexit, but you lot really are rough.

1:01:14So you become an MP 2004, you serve in John Howard's government. He loses an election to Kevin Rudd. He loses his seat. You narrowly lose the leadership to Brendan Nelson, but you're appointed shadow, equivalent of our shadow chancellor. A year later, you take him on and you oust him. Okay. You then support Labour Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on something and they all come back at you and they oust you. Okay. You then get persuaded to stay in politics. You then get into the cabinet when you win the election. Tony Abbott, he's the leader. You challenge him and you beat him. And then you get challenged.

1:01:56And then you win that against Peter Dutton. But then you get challenged again and you think, I'm not going to win this time, so I'm off. I mean, it's pretty brutal. And this is over a relatively short period of time. And I just wondered, you said these two great pluses, compulsory voting and preferential voting. Is your three-year term not just a complete and utter disaster for your governmental politics? Yeah, I think it's not complete and utter disaster. But yeah, we definitely should have four-year terms. Unfortunately, the three-year terms are in the Constitution. Yeah, I know. So we'd have to get everybody, literally everybody, would agree to it.

1:02:32Instructively, I think now all of the state and territory parliaments are four-year terms. So there's no doubt. I mean, I think most Australians would say three years is too short, five years is probably too long, four years is the right term. And my final final, a very quick question. Is Rupert Murdoch evil? Well, he's done a lot of evil things. I wouldn't say anybody's evil, but I think the, you know, I've known Rupert for 50 years. You've got to ask yourself, I think, in your life, what have you actually done with the power that you've had? Rupert's made himself rich and his family and all that stuff, but, I mean, is America and the English-speaking world are more divided and angry?

1:03:16He certainly made that angry. I don't think he would have had Brexit without Rupert. I don't think he would have had Trump without Rupert. and Rupert has been the loudest, most influential single voice to stand against action on global warming. So, you know, Brexit, Trump and climate denial, I don't think that's a great list of achievements. So, and all of them, very, very adverse. And if you want to, you know, they're bad consequences. Yeah, for sure.

1:03:46Rory Stewart:Malcolm, thank you. That was terrific. Yeah, great to see you both. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

1:03:54Well, Rory, that was a pretty brutal assessment of our beloved Prime Minister, I thought.

1:03:59Rory Stewart:Yeah, well, I'm glad to have someone say it. I mean, I didn't want to sort of get into a kicking Keir Starmer, but I'm afraid, as you know, I've probably said to you in the past, I've always felt that with Keir Starmer. I mean, I was astonished during the Brexit stuff, 2016-17, sitting in Parliament when he was Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit Secretary, making speeches on Brexit, and everyone kept saying, oh, it's amazing, this kind of great forensic mind. And I found him really dull. You know, this could have been the great, I mean, that was the real test case for me. That could have been the great emotional, spiritual argument of our age, Brexit.

1:04:34Rory Stewart:And he reduced it into sort of plodding his way through these speeches. And I don't think he's ever improved. I'm still a bit surprised by this story. And I think it was sort of driven weirdly by his friends from, you know, Tom Baldwin and others from before he became crown prostitute. I've never seen him give a good speech i've never seen him being forensic i've never seen this sort of brilliant barrister's mind i think it's all been a fiction from the beginning so so you agree with welcome i mean it's interesting it is always interesting when politicians go to other parliaments because of course they've got their own experience and obviously malcolm turnbull and every australian politician knows about our parliament has seen debates and what have you but it's really interesting to get his take sort of now out of frontline politics sort of sitting there in the chamber watching it and clearly watching it very very closely and then going away with that it was interesting though how i'm trying to remember apart from maybe a little bit with albanese now he didn't say much positive about any of the other prime ministers no no i mean look i mean again an australian listening to this and it's a bit like spaniards listening to our interview with the spanish prime minister depending on which political persuasion you're from you'll be shouting at the screen and wanting us to have pulled him up on this that and the other I guess his relationship to the Liberal Party, the Australian Conservative Party, is sort of dangerously close to my kind of relationship to the British Tory party.

1:05:56They don't really see you as a Tory.

1:05:58Rory Stewart:Yeah. Having gone quite a long way towards the centre, flirting with the Teals. And certainly Tony Abbott, who is playing the kind of Kemi-Badenhock role. I mean, he's now back in again as the kind of president of that party. We'll be trying to take them to the right and arguing that. that and this i don't think i wonder how you resolve this argument because what the pulses will say is wait a second we have objectively the conservative party in britain has lost all these votes to reform and objectively the liberal party in australia has lost all these votes to one nation and how are you going to get those votes back if you don't appeal to those people and then on the other hand you have people like me of course and malcolm turnbull saying no no we've got the votes are in the center ground we've got to get back to center ground and it Maybe that you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

1:06:45Yeah, yeah. No, listen, it's a tough call. Of course, that is. But it's interesting that his conclusion, right or wrong, is his view that Labour are going to win the next election. I thought that was a very interesting observation. I obviously hope he's right. Because he has reached the point. This is kind of, and again, I may be proved wrong. I've felt for some time now that I think Nigel Farage is not going to be the next prime minister. He clearly thinks Pauline Hanson is never going to be the prime minister. Are we both indulging in wishful thinking? or are we actually responding to a sense that they've sort of hit a peak?

1:07:17And if only our assessment depends on the other parties absolutely getting their act together. But I thought he put quite a good pitch for Australia. He wasn't, the one person he wasn't sort of diving into to speak against was Albanese. He seems to think he's doing a reasonable job. Yeah, that was interesting.

1:07:35Rory Stewart:I loved him working backwards on American dependency. I liked that distinction between capability and intent and saying you just can't build a system on the assumption that no American president will ever emerge who might weaponize the fact you're dependent on them for everything. Or private citizen like Elon Musk. You know, it's not just governments now that we have to watch. But what we didn't get into, and maybe we just got to keep getting into, is the cost and the difficulty of weaning ourselves off the US, doesn't matter whether you're in Australia or Britain or Europe, is just so extreme that it's all very well us, you know, saying logically you got to do it, but actually paying for it and doing it.

1:08:15Rory Stewart:And of course, doing it in an environment where America is determined to stop you doing it is the big challenge at the moment, isn't it? Do you think, Rory, that we've both been warmer in our assessment of him in the debrief because he brought his wife on after we were filming and they both told us that they were Trip Plus members? Do you think that's softened our possible, isn't it? He's a wily politician, isn't he? Politician, comes on, tells us about a few interviews that we've done that he liked. Yeah, that's it. Flatters us, tells me that, you know, I could be next in line. You know, this sort of strange, traitorous Republican tradition.

1:08:50King Rory, yeah. I thought, though, that, because we do have a lot of listeners in Australia, and we get told sometimes we don't do enough about Australia. So I hope people enjoyed that. And we've also got Kevin Rudd coming on sometime.

1:09:03Rory Stewart:I wonder whether it wouldn't be interesting for us to actually get Tony Abaton, because, and we didn't talk about this. And, of course, Malcolm would be horrified by my returning to kind of British snobbish sociology. But in a sense, there's something similar. They're both Sydney boys from these great big dominant schools in Sydney. They're both Rhodes Scholars and they were tussling each other in a kind of Cameron Johnson way for the leadership of their party for a long time. So it'd be interesting to get Tony Avedon. Also, I've got to say, I'm slowly but quite methodically working my way through Kevin Rudd's book on Xi Jinping.

1:09:39And my God, it is a piece of scholarship. It's built around kind of really close textual analysis of these big grand statements that Xi Jinping makes. He's agreed to come on at some point when he's next in the UK. I'd love to get Paul Keating, but, you know, I don't want to bother him too much.

1:10:00Rory Stewart:I sometimes get the impression that you sometimes think some of the real kind of intellectual grandees of Australian politics, you sometimes think might be a little bit pleased for themselves. but often when they come on they're very very charming if i mentioned malcolm turbol kevin rudd tony abbott to australians would they think they're quite pleased for themselves but would they also acknowledge that they could be quite charming i think they could do both but i i think they're i thought it was very interesting that exchange about the school thing i was going to mention the fact that if it's glasgow it's about religion you know what school did you go to but there is i've always liked this about australia they've got issues with racism they've got issues with you know that it was tragic in a way that albanese lost the voice vote but i thought i thought he was interesting on that so the aboriginal history has never fully been addressed but there is something much more classless about australia than there is about the uk and and i like that so and so i think there's a charm in them i've always felt i'm half australian half irish but i've got no australian blood no irish blood it's really weird and 100 scottish it's a very strange bit but there we are very good well now we'll finish lovely talk to you bye-bye