Gender equality

Luke de Pulford – The Human Rights Fight: China, Democracy and Global Responsibility

Luke de Pulford is a global human right mpaigner, particularly in the areas of modern slavery and human rights abuses in China

He is a co-founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and the creator of ‘Arise’ an anti-slavery charity.

Luke sits as a Commissioner on the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission and advises the World Uyghur Congress. In 2020 he was awarded the Bene Merenti medal by Pope Francis for his contribution to the anti-slavery movement—the youngest ever recipient.

Misha Zelinsky caught up with Luke for a chinwag about why human rights abuses matter to us all, the abuse of Uyghurs in China and what can be done, the fight for democracy in Hong Kong, why global coordination is more important than ever and how the democracies can prevail over autocracies in the long run.

 

TRANSCRIPT:

 

Misha Zelinsky:

Luke, welcome to Diplomates. How are you mate?

Luke de Pulford:

I am very well indeed. Very pleased to be here. Thank you.

Misha Zelinsky:

And of course, we’re recording this via the magic of Zoom. You are in London, I believe?

Luke de Pulford:

I am indeed. It’s sunny West London today, the first time in at least two months. So-

Misha Zelinsky:

It’s very good. And well mate, look, what’s the place to start? But I thought we might start with, when we’ll go through some of the other things you’ve done throughout your really amazing career thus far. But we might start with perhaps the most high profile piece of work that you’ve got on the way at the moment, which is the IPAC, the International parliamentary Alliance on China. For those who don’t know, for those who aren’t super China watches, although a lot of my listeners are, can you maybe just explain what it is and then we might get into how and why you set it up?

Luke de Pulford:

Yeah. I mean the easiest way to describe it as an international and cross party group of backbench politicians that have just come together to try to reform their own countries approach to China Policy. In a nutshell, that’s what it is. And we started off with eight legislatures. I’m not saying parliaments because all countries, because they’re not all. We’ve got the EU as well, which is obviously across those lines. But it started off with eight and we’ve grown to 20 legislatures and over 200 members now from all political parties. And I mean, a very, very broad ideological spectrum. So that’s what IPAC is.

Misha Zelinsky:

And so how is it that you sort of a human rights campaign, how he ended up in this pretty interesting international space and why did you get involved?

Luke de Pulford:

It’s actually a great question because my training is not as a China analyst. I don’t really come at it from that angle. I come at it almost exclusively actually from the human rights angle which has led to the other stuff. So let me tell the story like this. I have been working in and around the UK parliament for the better part of 15 years now. And for that entire period, I’ve been working to try to defend persecuted minorities in various parts of the world. So for all of that period of time, there’s been some focus on persecuted minorities in China. That’s always been a motivating thing for me, not a great specialism, but a motivating thing for me. I did a lot on the persecution of Christians in China about a decade ago. Anyway, in about 2015, I had to do some work on something called the Modern Slavery Act.

Luke de Pulford:

I know you’ve had some recent legislation in Australia as well, molded along the same thing. Actually, your legislation is better than ours. But in 2015, I was quite involved in trying to make that act stronger and wanted to do more and modern slavery. I ended up founding a charity, which is actually my remunerated work and what takes up most of my time. And that’s an international charity that works in countries of origin from where people are trafficked and focuses on prevention. So we do work in Nigeria, Eastern Europe, Philippines, India, some other countries. Now, the more you get into this area of modern slavery and exploitation, the more you realize that there were just some massive elephants in the room. And it had been clear to me that whole period, I knew about the situation of Turkic minorities in Western China, or you guys and others.

Luke de Pulford:

I’d known about that for some time. I couldn’t understand why nobody in the anti-slavery community would ever speak about it. You’ve got all of these NGOs, you’ve got all of these governments. No one would ever say, “We reckon there are a million people in camps in Western China, is that not slavery? And then what about these forced labor transfer schemes that are happening all over their country? Tens of thousands of people being bused around, is that not slavery? What about this organ trafficking?” For those who don’t know, modern slavery and human trafficking, organ trafficking is just a category of that, falls under that category. Organ trafficking, there’s a lot of noise around that in China, a lot of disputed evidence, but a lot of noise. “Why does anyone ever talk about that?” So it led me to look into it more and to start to say to some of my colleagues, “Why is this massive enslaving nation here not ever spoken about as a perpetrator of human trafficking and modern slavery? This makes no sense.”

Luke de Pulford:

And this led me more and more into a position where I came to see the Chinese Communist Party, particularly as arguably the world’s biggest human rights abuser. But, and this is the crucial point, not just within their own boundaries, a human rights threat to the rest of the world as well. And we can unpack that a little bit more as we go on. But that led me to believe this something is got to be done about this. And we can’t do it merely from country to country where individual countries or individual politicians become sidelines, exposed, painted as extremists out there in the corner. Actually this ought to be a mainstream concern. And if the problem, if the thing preventing those people from speaking out is a lack of support, is a lack of international consensus, then that’s the problem that we need to try to confront.

Luke de Pulford:

So what we ended up doing is speaking to politicians, realizing all over the world, we were pushing on an open door. There’s so much concern about China. The biggest and the great sadness for me is that, that content is everywhere. It’s even in those belt and road countries where people are even less free to speak than they are in Western democracies. But those guys don’t feel able to get involved in IPAC, if you see what I mean. So we started building out the alliance from there developing its principles, making sure that it could hang together as a very diverse group. And that’s what we’ve been on ever since.

Misha Zelinsky:

And so I suppose one of the ways to judge the success of these types of ventures is how much you’ve gotten out of the scheme arm of the CCP. Now, my understanding is you’ve been named personally as a person colluding with Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong, who was obviously the owner of the Apple News outlet there and a very high profile person. Have you been personally targeted in other ways? I mean, what risks has this brought to you in sticking your neck out like this against an incredibly powerful globally forward projecting regime?

Luke de Pulford:

Well yeah. I mean, I’ve had for about 18 months some guy and I presume it’s a man in Hong Kong. I know he’s in Hong Kong because I traced in there who has created basically versions of my identity. Mainly spoofed email addresses, but other things as well, has written to a lot of people pretending to be me. He actually successfully resigned my Conservative Party membership, believe it or not. So he had gleaned enough information about me to go through the process to do that. I’ll be honest with you, I see it as a low level nuisance. People can overplay this stuff. It’s not a pleasant, I don’t care and I don’t see it as much of a threat. It bothers other people more than it bothers me. And what I have dealt with is extraordinarily low level compared to what some other people in this country have and elsewhere. Like the Uyghurs and Xi or the Hong Kong has over here, the intimidation that they’re going through is real.

Luke de Pulford:

I’ve just got some annoyance on the internet. So I don’t take it that seriously. But yeah, I think I’m on the radar. Not very high up on the radar, I don’t want to overblow it. I’m not particularly high-profile. I do a lot of the activity, I do a lot of the coordination. But they’re much more concerned with the figureheads. This is why you see them target Jimmy Lai in the way that they do. And it’s just association with Jimmy Lai that’s got me onto that list and the global times as occasionally had a pop. But it’s not at the level of many others, is what I want to say. So I don’t want to come across as pleading about how much of a tough time I have.

Luke de Pulford:

I’ve just got some idiot who sends emails in my name to colleagues, sometimes to family members, to my political party, and many others with what I hope would be transparently stupid emails. However, one of his email addresses was, and I’m not joking here, lukedepulford.saint@gmail.com. Now-

Misha Zelinsky:

That’s not your email address?

Luke de Pulford:

No, that is not my email address. And the thing that was slightly annoying about it is that a lot of people responded to that believing I would have created that email address for myself. So that was the thing that was more upsetting than the intimidation itself.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, I was going to say, made look as a labor guy. He might’ve been doing you a favor resigning you from the Conservative Party mate, but I certainly won’t make any comment about that now.Yeah.

Luke de Pulford:

Laughing

Misha Zelinsky:

Now, I mean Luke, before we get into the specifics and I really want to dig into the specifics about human rights abuses in China by the CCP. What does success look like for the IPAC? Right? So obviously if you’ve got information being exchanged, and coordination between people concerned, and obviously I think a big focuses on it being bipartisan or nonpartisan, multi-partisan, I mean, in parliamentary democracies. But what does success look like in your role?

Luke de Pulford:

So that’d be honest that in two ways. IPAC really is primarily a campaigning organization in the sense that it tries to frame the debate. So in a superficial way, success for us would be governments, executives picking up on the stuff that we’re talking about, and that has happened. So one very good example, the revocation of extradition treaties with Hong Kong after the imposition of the national security law, that was an IPAC campaign. And the way that it worked, and it was a great affirmation of the whole model, was that we realized that this was an issue. We had an emergency meeting with a number of Hong Kong dissidents, and immediately these cross-party folk who’ve been selected for their ability to have influence within their own parties got to work. I mean, it was within 12 hours of that meeting that the Canadians had announced that they were going to revoke extradition treaty.

Luke de Pulford:

Why? Because is loved by his administration, and because Garnett, January was loved by his administration. And Garnett was able to say, “This is going to be a big party political headache unless as you move on it.” And he was saying, “We should be moving on it guys.” So it happened. And that set the tone, and we did something similar all over the world, including Australia. Now, that is a superficial way of saying these campaigns can work when they’re well deployed, strategically deployed in each jurisdiction. But there’s a more subtle way that IPAC is starting to bring about a sense of success which is that, in more exposed economies, economies which are more open to economic coercion like New Zealand and like some others. Before IPAC, there hadn’t been much of a skeptical corporates about China, and there isn’t that much anymore.

Luke de Pulford:

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not overplaying it. But there are plans now for organ trafficking legislation in New Zealand that tries to deal with a problem in China, which were unthinkable before IPAC. So what’s happened there? What’s happened is that, what would have looked in New Zealand like very isolated backbenchers now has the implied credibility of a global network of very high profile politicians. And that bolsters their efforts in their countries, particularly for smaller nations for more exposed economies. So that is a big strategic thing for us as well, and where we’re going to do more and more of that. So you’ve got come two levels, say, you’ve got the campaign victories, and they’ve been some, and then you’ve got the building up of a broader movement that helps some of the smaller exposed nations. I think success is starting to look like that. The big answer to that though is that, overarching success is having G7 wide strategy on China and Alliance of Democracies moving together realizing just how perilous the threat posed by China is. And we’re a long way away from that.

Misha Zelinsky:

And I’m keen to get to that, but let’s let’s dig into the human rights piece that we’ve been dancing around. I mean, Luke, I think firstly, the most probably egregious and you’ve touched on a number. But I mean, the situation is Xinjiang with the Uighurs. I mean, perhaps firstly, a quick recap of what is happening, what are the reports that we know about what are the things that are being reported. And I suppose, how worried should we be and what responsibility do we have in democratic nations to act on this?

Luke de Pulford:

So a brief overview of I think where we are in terms of the evidence. We have a lot of credible evidence of mass extrajudicial detention, which I don’t think anybody disputes anymore of at least 1 million people at any one time. There is a credible evidence of forced labor, which affects many of our supply chains, many of our best known and best loved brands. You have credible reports of forced sterilization and birth prevention among ethnic groups, which again is not broadly disputed. And then you’ve got a whole load of stuff which we’re starting to hear about and is beginning to be corroborated that people aren’t really sure about. Things like family separation, we know that that’s happening but to what degree, it isn’t really known.

Luke de Pulford:

There’s a lot of speculation about those numbers, but we know that children are being taken away from their families and reeducated. We know that there are certainly cases of organ trafficking, how deeply they’re linked to the state. There is dispute about, although the China Tribunal in 2018 reporters, and it was pretty clear that a state sponsored forced organ harvesting in China. So taking those things as a broad picture, what you end up with is the consideration of whether or not these things taken together constitute crimes against humanity and/or genocide. And those things are international crimes with international definitions. So I mean, I guess where the question goes is, “How are they going to managing genocide?” And the reason-

Misha Zelinsky:

And so let [inaudible 00:14:54] that because I mean the definitions in this space are important, right? And that’s been evolving quite a bit in recent times. So can’t believe that.

Luke de Pulford:

They are hugely important. But the irritating thing is, it’s also a bit of a misnomer because them being international crimes, we will only ever know if China has committed genocide if there is a court judgment saying that they have. And the same for crimes against humanity. So everything that we’re dealing with now is speculative. So you’ll get a load of information, and a lawyer could produce a legal opinion. And the most damning conclusion that a lawyer could reach now is, “We think that there’s a good case that,” which is what they’ve done. So we had two very weighty legal opinions. One from Essex Court Chambers who were subsequently sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party, who produced a very weighty legal opinion. Which concluded that there was a very, very good case to be made that China had committed both crimes against humanity and genocide. On the basis that the grounds of the genocide convention and the grounds required the legal thresholds for crimes against humanity were clearly met.

Luke de Pulford:

And more importantly, that the intent was there. And this is the problem with genocide. It’s establishing intent is the problem. It’s an extremely high bar. It’s very rare. And for that reason, people shy away from it understandably. The problem, and allow me to digress ever so slightly on this. The problem with genocide is that we are bound not just to punish the thing. Signatory to the Genocide Convention are bound to prevent it as well. So you are bound to prevent and punish genocide. And it is not possible to prevent genocide if you are unable to use the word genocide without a court determination, without having prosecuted somebody. Genocide prosecutions, bear with me, take decades, decades. Everyone will be dead by the time anyone in China is prosecuted for genocide if and when they are.

Luke de Pulford:

So the question for us as democratic states, and this is the really difficult conundrum becomes, “When do you act to prevent a genocide according to your legal duties, your duties under the Genocide Convention, when do you act to prevent it?” My argument would be, if you have very weighty tomes from numerous, very diverse international sources saying that, “It seems as if the grounds for genocide the match. And it seems as if there is intent or at least some evidence of intent.” I believe that triggers our duty to prevent. And the problem is, we’re not doing any of that. So we’re hiding from it. People don’t like these duties. They don’t like the Genocide Convention. Like in the UK, our policy is not to use the word genocide at all until there is a court determination. Hence, we failed to use the word in association with what was happening to Yazidis and other religious minorities [inaudible 00:17:56] about the clearest and most obvious genocide and recent times in my view. Haven’t used it in relation to what’s happened to the Rohingya.

Luke de Pulford:

Didn’t use it back in Rwanda, didn’t use it around the time of [inaudible 00:18:06]. The UK has never succeeded in recognizing a genocide while one was ongoing. Why? Because of this policy, which requires everyone to be dead in order to act. So my big argument around it would be, “Guys, let’s not get too caught up in whether or not we believe that this legal threshold is met. What we have to do is say, “All right, are there reasonable, diverse, independent objective of analysts who believe there is a case that there may be genocide attacks taking place in that part of the country?”” Okay. And that case governments have a very, very strong duty to try to act to prevent. And that is the duty placed upon us by the Genocide Convention. And we’re failing in that duty right now.

Misha Zelinsky:

And so then what does action look like? So leaving aside this complexity around the relationship between the legal avenues and the politics. What is actual action look like? So let’s say we were to… And Luke, I mean, we know that the CCPs attitudes international judgments, the law of the sea, et cetera, with the South China Sea, annexations are pretty dubious. Anyway, what does action look like? What does meaningful intervention look like when dealing with this question of exploitation, the way you’ve described it the way it is?

Luke de Pulford:

Again, very difficult question to answer and the reason being that no one’s ever done it. So while you’ve had the US take a very different approach to the rest of the world. They’ve made political, what we would call political determinations of genocide, rather than legal ones. So the UK defers to the legal system. The US has happy to say, “We recognize genocide.” But because they have a different relationship to the Genocide Convention, it doesn’t lead on to the corresponding action that we might expect. So after the Yazidis, stuff happened, don’t get me wrong, but not in a way that we would have normally framed it. So let me answer it like this. The ICJ, so the International Court of Justice, Bosnia case was quite clear. It tried to probe this and say, “What are our country’s duties? What is actually triggered here when countries believe that a genocide might be developing.” It is very, very clear. It says that it has to use all available means to try to bring it to an end or reasonable available means.

Luke de Pulford:

And that’s a very, very broad gambit there like, “What does that mean?” Well, I would say what it doesn’t mean is deepening bilateral trade with that country, which is what the UK is currently doing. Dominic Raab on the one hand says they have industrial scale human rights abuses. Those are his words, that’s a quote. And then on the other hand, we find that we are reopening economic and financial dialogue and JETCO economic summit with them. That is not consistent. You can’t do that. That makes no sense. That is not consistent with our international obligations. So it doesn’t mean that. Well, it could well mean, all the way anything along this very, very long spectrum of possible bilateral and then multilateral actions, which start with, I think certainly reducing dependency move into punitive economic sanctions and then into multilateral action, multilateral sanctions.

Luke de Pulford:

And then there are a whole load of other actions that we’d never want to talk about and hope never got up to and including some degree of humanitarian intervention which I wouldn’t advocate and certainly, certainly not now. But that ought to be on the table and has been on the table in the past when people have been talking about mass atrocity crimes, okay? So not talking about China, but talking generally humanitarian intervention has been something which has been, generally speaking conceptually on the radar as-

Misha Zelinsky:

You’ve got Bosnia for example in the ’90s.

Luke de Pulford:

Exactly. Yeah. So nuclear option very, very worst case scenario. This is something which has been on the radar for the international community, I wouldn’t advocate it for China. But you see what I mean? There’s a very broad spectrum. And right now I’d look at the international community and say, “Are you doing that stuff?” And the answer is a resounding, no.

Misha Zelinsky:

I mean, it sounds like you would probably advocate for things like tariffs on the cotton produce from Xinjiang, which is 85% of China’s cotton production comes from there. And an enormous amount of that obviously goes into global textile production. So the brands that we’re used to that that seems like an obvious place. I’m seeing more pressure coming in companies like that, like H&M for example, and Nike and others. But a little bit more of a specific example. There’s a lot to talk about the Winter Olympics coming up in Beijing. What’s the world’s obligation here in terms of boycotting it? I’m seeing it coming on the radar United States, Nancy Pelosi’s talked about partial boycott, which is essentially the fleets would go, but dignitaries wouldn’t. How do you see that given that, Olympic games, one are, a celebration of humanity and two are, arguably, opportunities for propaganda and global soft power projection?

Luke de Pulford:

So the Olympic games, part of the reason that they’re so resistant to any involvement or capitulating to pressure around human rights abuse is very reasonable. Having this global show of unity is important, and they’ve a long history of doing that. The Olympic truce is a very ancient thing. It was supposed to be a way of waring nations allowing people to get to the games back in ancient times. Olympic truce is very old. I think the argument around what’s happening in Western China is that, on this, let’s say sliding scale of abuses, some things are simply beyond the pale. And enabling a big international sporting event implies this credibility, impeach credibility to that nation that it does not deserve. And arguably makes the situation worse and imperils them.

Luke de Pulford:

So this is an argument I think now has real traction and can’t be denied. There’s a lot of opposition to an outright boycott. So IPAC is going to be doing something on this fairly soon. But even within this broad alliance of politicians, there is disagreement. There are people who wouldn’t wants to punish athletes who have spent four years training for something. It’s not their fault that the IOC has decided to do this and in Beijing. Why should they suffer? And you can see that there is a strong argument there. So some of us who are working on this same has started saying, “Well, why don’t we move the games, then it shouldn’t be there. There are lots of places that could put on a Winter Olympics and make short notice, what’s wrong with that?” And then the IOC said that they weren’t considering moving it.

Luke de Pulford:

So I think where it’s moving now is towards a diplomatic and commercial boycott, which is what Nancy Pelosi was talking about. And which I think enjoys pretty broad consensus. And I’d be surprised if that didn’t end up having major traction with executives. But I’d say this, in 1980, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and the response to that was the US trying to lead a boycott of the games which were Russia, well in Soviet Union. And that boycott had huge success. Some people have forgotten about this. Mohammed Ali went around the world trying to persuade nations to stay away, he was quite successful. And some of these videos were quite hilarious. He was sent by Jimmy Carter and he went knocking on doors in African nations saying, “Don’t go to the Olympics.”

Luke de Pulford:

So I would just say, people are looking upon this as some kind of a really awful thing. We’ve done it before, we did it with good reason before. It resulted an accountable boycott the next Olympic Games by the way, in 1984. So it was all a bit of a mess. But I would put the question pretty simply, “Is what the Soviets did to Afghanistan worse than what the Chinese government is doing to Turkic Muslims and other minorities in Northwest China.” My strong response to that would be, no. And if it is show me the evidence. Because I don’t understand why 2 million people in concentration camps isn’t bad enough for us to think again about legitimizing the state which is perpetrating it.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now, specifically talking about the state, the CCP, the party apparatus itself. One other area of I suppose, retaliation that democracies can impose have been broadly used against the Russians. But is this concept of the Magnitsky tiebacks were essentially sanctioned senior members of a regime for particular acts and prevent them from being able to travel or move money, et cetera. I mean, do you advocate for those types of things? I mean, that would be a bit more targeted way of dealing with some of these challenges, but of course brings enormous diplomatic risk.

Luke de Pulford:

Yes, I do. And you’re right. It does bring diplomatic risks. It’s quite funny actually, while we were pushing for the genocide amendment over here in the UK, which was a way of trying to get through this policy difficulty around genocide in the UK. Because there won’t ever be an international court case dealing with China because China will block it, but that’s a whole other point. But when we were dealing with that, I know that there were internal government conversations saying, “Should we just bring forward these Magnitsky sanctions?” And the response within government was, “That will be worse for us in this genocide of the member.” So you’re right. I think a huge diplomatic bounty is placed on the Magnitsky style approach. And that’s why I believe that they can be so valuable. But, and I’ve said this to Bill Browder and I don’t think he would disagree. “They are not a substitute for multi-lateral or binational action led by governments. And they can’t just be an excuse to get on with dealing with a perpetrating government, a government which has perpetrating human rights abuse because you’ve just singled out one of them.”

Luke de Pulford:

If we know anything about the Chinese Communist Party is that, these people don’t act unilaterally as if it was their idea to pursue genocidal policies in the Uighur region. I mean, come on, give me a break. The whole argument being made here is that this is a governmental approach. So for us to back Magnitsky and only Magnitsky and say, “Oh, well that gets us off the hook for pursuing proper bilateral sanctions or multilateral sanctions is a real cop-out.” And I think we need to be clear about that.

Misha Zelinsky:

And so one thing I’m sort of curious about, I mean, I talked about it a little bit you were very, I think, brave in the way you dismissed concerns. But you can see governments being afraid of taking on the might of the CCP, right? So how do we deal with this challenge where the CCP is very belligerent when it wants to be about punishing those who don’t acquiesce to the party line or be that Chinese nationals or diaspora living in Western nations or indeed governments like apparently in Australia. We’ve got an enormous trade sections being posed on Australia as a result of a number of foreign policy and domestic decisions we’ve made in protection of our own sovereignty. How do you stand up to that? I mean, is it that little bit of that strengthened numbers piece you talked about with New Zealand or are there other ways?

Luke de Pulford:

Yeah, I think there other are ways and your right to point it out. People forget very easily that, particularly members of the Chinese Communist Party abroad are subject to party discipline. They can’t just go about their day integrating into the society in a way that you would normally expect. And even those Chinese nationals who are not members of the CCP are still, I mean, countless examples of this, monitored for their behavior. So I’ll give you an example. I mean, just this week, we were talking to the master of Jesus College Cambridge about various things that have been happening there. Its controversial relationship between that college and China. Which they strongly dispute, but everybody else thinks that they got too cozy. Anyway, a deputy foreign minister at the Chinese embassy to the UK keeps turning up at their events. And basically intimidates people, puts provocative stuff in the chats on Zooms and it makes careful notes of who’s turning up and that kind of thing

Luke de Pulford:

In that situation, the presence of somebody like that is in direct conflict or tension with the whole notion of academic freedom, particularly for those students who don’t enjoy it. Can’t possibly enjoy any sense of academic freedom if they’re having people like that breathing down the neck. Now, the reason I raise that example is, it shows the depth of the Malays here and what has been, I think Western democracy is very much asleep on the watch while this kind of stuff has happened. The reason I don’t really like this narrative, and I speak from the perspective of somebody who politically is quite across the spectrum myself. One of the reasons that having me try to maintain IPAC has kind of worked.

Luke de Pulford:

I really hate this whole reds under the bed stuff. And I do not want to be a part of any initiative which promotes suspicion of people who look like they have Eastern or Southeast Asian heritage, which has become a big, big problem, particularly on coronavirus origins. So I hate this stuff, but at the same time feel that we have to recognize what is actually going on here. And we haven’t really found a vernacular and a way of doing that, which sufficiently separates out the party from people. And because it’s a very difficult thing to do. And the Chinese Communist Party itself is spending so much political capital and effort in conflating those things. The nationalistic narrative exists for that purpose. Whether or not hand chauvinism has struggled in the Chinese Communist Party or not is another question.

Luke de Pulford:

But the fact that there’s been a resurgence in it and that ethnic nationalism is unquestionable, and you see that playing out. So that puts us in a tough position, “What are we supposed to do in response to that?” Well, I think the first thing is that, if we’re going to act against foreign interference, and if we’re going to act to protect our critical infrastructure, but then also our institutions of national life, our academic framework and the rest of it. If we’re going to do all of that successfully, we have to do that in a way which bears responsibility for the possible consequences of those actions. So what I’ve been advocating for, and this is a long way of saying, we actually need to ensure that there is a very deep rooted anti-racism work that goes alongside of it. Unfortunately, that’s a position that we can put in by the Chinese Communist Party. But I would strongly argue for us seeing those things as going in parallel, it’s too much of a risk otherwise.

Misha Zelinsky:

And it is increasingly difficult because of the CCP claims agency and ownership and demands fealty from the entire Chinese diaspora around the world. And of course China’s communities are not monolithic, but it is difficult when the regime itself the blender to, as you touched on now it. We spend all the time talking about Xinjiang, but actually I want to talk about particularly region of China that is obviously closely line to United Kingdom, traditionally relating to Hong Kong. I mean, given everything that’s happened there in terms of the crushing of the democratic movement in Hong Kong and they’ve unfortunately accelerated under the cover of coronavirus. I mean, do you still think that the UK or the Commonwealth has a special responsibility in what is the role of the UK particularly, but also nations like Australia in either push you back and what’s happening there, offering safe haven to those that want to get out?

Luke de Pulford:

So the UK has particular responsibilities, not just because of the longstanding relationship through colonialism then afterwards. We negotiated the treaty, the Sino British Joint Declaration. And that treaty puts an obligation upon us to safeguard and to protect Hong Kong’s way of life and autonomy. So those are very strong obligations that are on us. Now, the UK believes that it has discharged those obligations through the BNO scheme. Which for those who don’t know the, British National Overseas Passport scheme. So this is complicated, but there was a category of British national in Hong Kong for a while. So they have passports. And what the UK has said is that, those people who are eligible for BNO status British National Overseas status can come and live in the UK, and they have a pathway to citizenship.

Luke de Pulford:

So in terms of it like an immigration scheme for the UK, it is extremely generous. But it does nothing to uphold the way of life and autonomy of the people of Hong Kong. Being rude about it, it’s basically a surrender tactic. And the UK hasn’t done anything the whole time to account for totally destroying that treaty. And here’s the key point, and this is why it affects Australia. That treaty isn’t just the custody of the UK. It was launched at the United Nations. So all of the nations of the United Nations should bear responsibility for its implementation.

Luke de Pulford:

There have been no efforts, the whole China to account for breaking that treaty at the UN. No one has done anything on that. So what I would say is that, “Yeah. Okay. So a lifeboat scheme better than nothing.” Of course, it is. And for democratic nations to come together and to almost share the load, because there’s quite a lot of people who want to leave. Between them, I think is a good thing, but the BNO scheme has big gaps as well. And Australia could be one of the nations filling those gaps. For example, the BNO scheme doesn’t apply to anybody born after 1997. That’s most of the people who are on the streets of Hong Kong protesting.

Misha Zelinsky:

So youth led movement. Yeah.

Luke de Pulford:

So who’s the scheme for in the UK? And who’s going to pick up the slack for those people? Where they’re going to go? Those questions have been posed and not in my view adequately answered yet. But the lifeboat scheme is basically accepting that Hong Kong has been destroyed by China. And the only way for the people there to live anything remotely akin to their previous lives is to leave. Well, not good enough. We’re running away from holding this nation accountable. And it’s our legal responsibility, Australia is too because they’re a part of this group of nations which is supposed to uphold and emboss the Sino British Joint Declaration. So yeah, there’s a responsibility not just UK and Commonwealth, but UN.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now, one of the things, and we’ve touched on it. One of the sort of talking points from the CCP when the issues of domestic human rights abuses in China are raised either they’re denied or they devolve into whataboutism, right? So they like to play our own somewhat dubious, obviously records in the west historically. Whether it be British colonialism or in Australia, it’s treatment of indigenous or White Australia policy. Or even recently in Germany saying to the Germans, “Well, you guys would know what genocide looks like,” right? So I suppose, how important is getting our own house in order, but then also, how do you ensure that these arguments don’t devolve into tit for tat whataboutism and actually still focus on the stamping out of the behavior that we have been discussing?

Luke de Pulford:

I think the answer is simple, logic really, and governments growing a pair being a bit brutal about it. But if their answer to, we’ve got human rights abuses is you had historic human rights abuses. Then the answer is just got to be logical. That’s irrelevant. That has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on your existing human rights abuses. And it certainly does not. It certainly doesn’t diminish your culpability. So actually Reinhard Butikofer, who’s an MEP co-chair for IPAC and an very senior green. But also the EU’s point personal on Chinese, sort of heads up whatever the the committee is there on China. And it’s great. He really knows China. His answers to this was really interesting.

Luke de Pulford:

He gave a quote that said, something along the lines of, “The Holocaust cannot be used as a political football for rhetorical gain. If you believe that invoking that is going to absolve you from your responsibilities, always going to somehow deflect from the fact that you still haven’t allowed in any kind of independent investigation into interest Xinjiang, you’re mistaken.” I think that’s the right line. I think we just have to be a bit firmer about it and brutally logical in saying, “It’s got nothing to do with it.”

Misha Zelinsky:

Zooming out a little. Yeah. I mean, we’ve talked about human rights, which is like a global universal principle. But they are constructs traditionally at least in the modern sense of democracies and liberal democracies. And so what we’re really seeing in many ways here is a contest between autocracies and democracies. And I suppose, the alliances you’re talking about are alliances indeed amongst democracies. You’ve discussed the putting in broadening these alliances and not necessarily in a cold war sense, but certainly nations with mutually aligned interests working together. But are you confident that democracies can prevail against autocracies? Because a lot of people when you look at arguably the way perhaps China’s handled COVID, versus perhaps more challenging way it’s been dealt within European Nations, United Kingdom and US. How do you see that challenge?

Luke de Pulford:

Well, I think democracies can and will prevail on the basis that the market based system is far more responsive to them. The free flow of information, the notion of trust and of relative independence from the government are really essential commercial tools. And when you remove those, it doesn’t work that well. I think for that reason alone, quite apart from the fact that people prefer freedom, is one of the reasons that even the so-called might of the Chinese Communist Party is no match for it. And you can see this, they’ve attempted to create their own financial centers outside of Hong Kong, and really struggled. Why? Because they lack the core ingredients for a successful market flow. It’s just, I can’t see it happening for them in a much broader sense.

Luke de Pulford:

And it’s why that they’ve taken the strategic tech they have in terms of expanding their power. Now I think things will probably get a little bit worse before they get better with the current situation. But they can’t continue forever. It’s a bit difficult thing to predict in the context of the CCP, just because it’s very closed and it’s messy. And my read of it is that, the decisions which are being made at the top level of the CCP strategic decisions, but especially diplomatic decisions, are more and more wrong-headed. Which is quite typical if you look at the history of authoritarianism quite typical of a pattern whereby the worst things seem to get the smaller the circle of advisors gets in the worst of mistakes. That’s where we are with the CCP right now. Now, I’m not predicting that the thing will die anytime soon. But it is not in a healthy place.

Misha Zelinsky:

And a lot of analysts say, when you look at the regime of Xi Jinping, a lot of it’s driven by paranoia. Firstly, the paranoia of how his family was removed originally, and then the way he was pushed right to the fringe. That he deeply understands what it is to be removed from power. And so that paranoia drives so much of the decision making. But what is interesting, not withstanding all the troubles we’ve seen in the United States for the last four years, that China has driven so many native its neighboring nations and nations around the world back into, I suppose, not the arms of the Americans, but certainly wanting to deepen alliances. Which is quite instructive really, when you look at the behaviors being counterproductive notwithstanding how concerning it is.

Luke de Pulford:

Yeah. Very much so. And I mean, the best example of this is fact that they managed to destroy, or at least put on ice their comprehensive investment agreement deal with the EU. Which Germany had pushed for like hell they pushed so hard for that. They couldn’t have pushed harder. They rammed it through at the last minute. And the European Parliament, we’re going to have to go along with it. Well, they’ve somehow managed to unite the entire European parliament against them who have just voted through resolution saying, “This thing isn’t going to happen until you lift the sanctions.” Well, I mean, that’s a profound act of self-harm from China, which can only have occurred within the context that you set out. So for those reasons and many more, it’s not going to be around forever. And I am one of those people who are not that backward about being forward about saying that that party regime is a bad thing and the sooner it’s gone the better.

Misha Zelinsky:

And do you hold out hope for… I mean, there was always this the thesis, China will get rich and then it will become democratic. And then a lot of people have subsequently… Some people hanging on to that thesis, but increasingly people are being persuaded by the behavior and the evidence. But do you believe, I mean, some people will also argue in that context that Asian societies or Confucian societies don’t want democracy or have no history of democracy. They’re more comfortable in more centralized governing or totalitarian type regimes. Do you accept that, firstly, and then do you think that democracy in China is possible?

Luke de Pulford:

Oh, it’s certainly possible. And that’s one of the reasons that Taiwan is so viciously hated because it’s a clear example. Now, I would with the conversation slightly different. I want to frame it slightly differently. If you look at the things that Xi Jinping said, it’s quite that, that tendency towards opening up and democracy, but also to human rights is not completely alien to the people of China. Some of the people who played a part in the draftsmanship of the Universal Declaration of Human Right were Chinese drafters. This is often forgotten about. So we need to be careful of playing too much into the narrative that there is a Confucian or ethnocentric value system, which is going to project something new upon the world which will bring about a more stable and successful civilization. Because that is just a part of that nationalistic narrative.

Luke de Pulford:

It’s not actually true. And the history of China is way more complex than that, with lots of different tracks strands of thinking. What I would say is that the human rights project, and this is why we have to wake up and smell the coffee. The Human Rights Project, the principles of universality around individual human dignity and everything that flows from those. They were tolerance, all of the principles that undergirds the Universal Declaration and then the Principle Human Rights Instruments of the UN, they were forged in the aftermath of the Holocaust because people didn’t want that to happen again. And they were very, very hard one. What we see now is a Chinese Communist Party, which wants to remake the hierarchy of rights. You very explicitly stated with economic and social rights at the top, and the sort of fundamental inalienable rights that we talk about, are which were supposed to be about the founding purposes of the whole bloody thing at further down the hierarchy subjugated to economic and social rights and security, that kind of stuff.

Luke de Pulford:

And rights to security, terrifying things, which through the lens through which they would justify what they’re doing in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Now, as Trump has retreated from the UN and a number of other nations, rather than engaging in realizing, “This is our common project, the genie’s out of the bottle here, and we’ve got to protect this thing. These custodian institutions for what we believe.” That vacuum has been filled by the CCP. And they are very successfully undermining that institution and changing into something else. We must not make the mistake of saying that the thing they’re trying to change it into is more compatible with Chinese people. I think that’s false. I think it is more compatible with a particular ideology pursued by this particular government, which wouldn’t have even been pursued 15, 20 years ago by Chinese government. So let’s be really careful and nuanced about that narrative I think. And distinguished as much as we possibly can, but also advocate for people waking up. Because use it or lose it, the UN it’s well on the way out.

Misha Zelinsky:

So I’m curious, I mean, you’ve talked about the UN, that you’ve still got hope for it or not to say it’s quixotic. But what we’re seeing more of, is what is so-called minilateralism where you see things like the quad where India, Japan, Australia, and the United States, or perhaps there’s talk of a D-10 where you have the democratic nations of the G7 there. Do you still favor going through the, I suppose, the core multilateral institutions not withstanding their dysfunction?

Luke de Pulford:

We need both, but we need to be very wary of creating lots of many UN 2.0, 3.0, 4.0. The reason being that the genius out of the bottle with the UN. We’ve created a huge multilateral institution with huge power and huge legitimacy. And if we retreat from that, it’ll just be remade in a slightly different image and an image which isn’t faithful to its founding purposes. That is what’s happening at the moment. So I wouldn’t say let’s not do these smaller things. I think we should, but we shouldn’t do them to the detriment of the UN. And we certainly shouldn’t let them be an excuse for a treat from the UN.

Misha Zelinsky:

And so just one last question before we get to the trademark final, a hokey question of this show. But we talked about, verifiable things out of Xinjiang about what’s happening there, but you’re someone that obviously is anchored. In fact. How do we promote… This challenge between, and again, it’s principally between authoritarian and totalitarian states, but it’s also exists within Western discourses about misinformation, counter narratives and the ability to discern what’s true and what is not. And COVID is a great example where China has been desperately trying to put out counter narratives about what’s happening. And you’re seeing even in Europe with Russian misinformation campaigns relating to vaccine hesitancy. How do we actually promote that? And how do we secure ourselves against misinformation campaigns in that sense?

Luke de Pulford:

Honestly, I think it’s extremely difficult. I don’t have the answers to it. And then it manifests in so many ways. So for example, right now there’s a bit of a row going on within the Uyghur community about a couple of testimonies that came out which are exaggerated. Now, apart from being a bit of a gift to the Chinese Communist Party, part of the problem is that, there’s this huge onus on journalists and the people reporting this stuff to do you do what they can in terms of verification. And it is extremely difficult for all reasons to tell the difference between, not just fact and fiction, but fact and then a little bit of embellishment. Which is often what you’re dealing with. Now, that’s just in microcosm a problem within the wider community. When you start talking about broader disinformation, like the kind of disinformation which has been pumped into Taiwan recently, how do you deal with that kind of thing?

Luke de Pulford:

I don’t think that we’ve got a very coherent plan for you all, to be honest. Luckily, I would say that right now from the stuff that I see, is not really sophisticated enough in the West to claim many hearts or minds. And you’ve probably seen this phenomenon with a load of Westerners who get paid money presumably, I don’t know where from. But it’s got to originate with the Chinese government somewhere to make apologetic videos about what’s happening in China and how great China is. I mean, it’s just not persuasive. It does not persuade anyone as far as I’m aware. And if it does, I’d be really surprised, and load of inflated viewing figures and likes. None of it’s particularly real, but it will get more sophisticated. So I’m not answering your question particularly well-

Misha Zelinsky:

And the Russians are much better at it than the CCP, right? They’re far more sophisticated in their PSYOPs. I mean, I’m not suggesting you have the answer, but I guess I’m more curious about how much does it undermine the work you do specifically. Because, as you said, you’ve got this challenge where you’re trying to verify things, but then actively being undermined at the same time. And when everything’s true, and I think it’s true. And that’s the aim, right? Of these regimes.

Luke de Pulford:

I would say, I don’t think it’s got to that level of sophistication certainly in the UK yet as far as I’ve seen. The bigger threat is the threat from within, which comes from people who have predicated their entire careers on being nice to China or this idea that China is going to open up. I’m not trying to say that these people, they’re not bad people. And there are a lot of people mainstream folk who believed that that would happen. The difficulty is that quite a number of people in positions of power now are really hit to that wagon, and they won’t let go. So they’re the people talking about the needs to have a more nuanced relationship with China, not to view everything through the prism of human rights, this kind of stuff.

Luke de Pulford:

You can’t have a bilateral relationship which is just about human rights. This is the argument they’re trying to mount now, and it’ll have some traction. And they’re more of a threat because what they do is, they absolve the UK or other nations from having to act. They give them a reason not to, and at the same time as diminishing the scale of the consent. So what you will find in the UK is that the guys who talk about nuance are also the most skeptical about the evidence. So I think different disinformation plays into that a little bit, for sure. But I actually believe that we harm ourselves way more than the disinformation campaigns are harming us.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well. And that’s a really great place too. I mean, I think you and I can talk about this for it a long time. But I’m going to have to let you get on with your day. But I can’t let you go without answering the textbook question I ask every guest here, which is the Diplomates barbecue question. Now, I’m sure you’re a little bit horrified at this prospect as a poem, but as a foreign guest, you have to invite three Ozzies. So three convicts from the Antipodes. So barbecue at Luke’s – who are they and why?

Luke de Pulford:

First of all, let me clarify it. Can they be dead?

Misha Zelinsky:

Yeah. If that makes you happier than they can absolutely be dead, man.

Luke de Pulford:

So my first and this is very sincere because this is one of the people I admire most in Australian history. But not just in Australia history, but anywhere. I’m going to go with Saint Mary MacKillop. Now, I don’t know if this is a name that means much to you, but-

Misha Zelinsky:

It does actually. Yeah.

Luke de Pulford:

Incredible woman who founded the Joseph order. He was a bee in the bonnet of anybody who tried to hold her under authority. Remarkably entrepreneurial woman who gave her life to those who were suffering. I think she’s amazing. And the Ozzie should make more of a noise about her in my view. 19th century, Australian Saint canonized in 2010 when I was living in Rome. So yeah, I’m a fan. Now the next, I was joking about this. But I thought I know barbecue is complete without being an argument. And I would love to sit down this controversial guy, Jeff Robbie. You know this guy?

Misha Zelinsky:

Oh, Yeah. Robbie, the former ambassador. Oh mate, you guys would get on like a house on fire. He’s a noted China dove if we can put it in those terms.

Luke de Pulford:

Absolutely. But I think I found it very interesting that when China was retaliating against Australia by imposing ridiculous tariffs on your wine, his white line of wine because he’s also an entrepreneur and has his own vineyards, was one of the lines that didn’t suffer. He unfortunately didn’t have very heavy tariffs placed upon him, and I leave it to any-

Misha Zelinsky:

And now its just a coincidence, mate. I’m sure those are just-

Luke de Pulford:

That’s the coincidence. But I quite like to have an argument with a guy-

Misha Zelinsky:

Maybe some wines, no doubt. But he can bring it.

Luke de Pulford:

Not some of his wine, I don’t think I’ve heard bad things. And then finally, this was a toss up between Nick Cavan and Kim Kitchen. But I’m going to at the risk of seeming as if I’m brown nosing one of my co-chairs. I just think Kim kitchen is a lovely person. And I’d love to have a barbecue with her, which I haven’t been able to do yet.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, I know Kim very well. She’s a listener of the show. So I’m especially to go to thrill. But yeah, a senator and does a lot of good work and she’s actually been pushing one of important action around acknowledgement the atrocities occurring in Xinjiang. So you’ve got a site, a former ambassador such a wine entrepreneur and an Ozzy Labor Senator, mate. So it’s a good mix, no doubt.

Luke de Pulford:

Barbecues of mine are always a great laugh, as you can see.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, mate, Luke, thanks so much for coming on. Congratulations on all the work you’ve been doing to date and keep it up and we’ll hope to stay in touch.

Luke de Pulford:

Pleasure is all to me. Thank you very much.

 

Chris Pyne – The Insider: Politics, Party and Parliament

Chris Pyne was the Federal Member for Sturt for 26 years.

He was Leader of the House and held a number of senior Cabinet ministries, including that of defence.

Pyne’s autobiography ‘The Insider’ is a fantastic account of life in the Canberra Bubble but also a deep dive into serious public policy and defence policy in particular.

Misha Zelinsky caught up with Chris for a chinwag about his career in politics. They talk about his bruising preselection in his 20s, the politics of politics, the horror show that was the 43rd Parliament, the task of rebuilding Australia’s military capabilities, what’s holding back an Australian nuclear industry, dealing with a rising Chinese Communist Party superpower, how the west can address the Uighur challenge and why politics shouldn’t be personal.

Show notes:

@mishazelinsky @diplomates.show

Keep sending your questions through, we love reading and answering them!

We were in the top 15 shows in Australia last episode – so thanks for your ongoing support.

Please rate, review and share!

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Misha Zelinsky:

Chris Pyne, welcome to Diplomates, thanks for joining us.

Chris Pyne:

What’s it called?

Misha Zelinsky:

Diplomates, get it?

Chris Pyne:

Diplomates?

Misha Zelinsky:

Yeah.

Chris Pyne:

Oh, that’s cool.

Misha Zelinsky:

Yeah. It’s a pun.

Chris Pyne:

Indeed. Diplomates.

Misha Zelinsky:

Thank you for coming on.

Chris Pyne:

It’s a pleasure, Misha, thanks for having me.

Misha Zelinsky:

Oh well, very excited to chat to you. So being through, we read your book recently and there’s many things we can talk about particularly around current affairs but I wanted to start at the beginning of your political career. I was quite struck, you’ve basically effectively blasted your way into parliament at a very young age.

Chris Pyne:

Yeah, it’s true.

Misha Zelinsky:

Maybe I was just thinking, what was that like? And then upon reflection, how do you look back on that? I mean to go in there in the way that you did must have been quite an extraordinary experience.

Chris Pyne:

At the time it seemed like the most normal thing to do, which is very unusual. But I guess, I decided to go into parliament when I was in about year 10 and I was 15 and I thought, well, I’ll be the member for Sturt because all the power is shifting to Canberra and so I like state politics but not enough to go into it. I thought, well I’ll be the member for Sturt because I live in Sturt, and I’ll do that in about 10 years. I thought that seemed like a plan.

Misha Zelinsky:

So you set yourself that timetable?

Chris Pyne:

I did. And I left school and I joined the Liberal Party, the Burnside branch, the Young Liberals and the Liberal Students all in the same day in December 1984, which was the orientation day at Adelaide Uni. I became president of all of those things and by 1992, and ’91 really, I thought… Well, actually Ian Wilson, my predecessor who’d been in parliament for 20 something years, since 1966, and then he had a three year break. Another guy challenged him called Jim Durden in late 1991, and so I spent about a month ringing the opinion makers in the eastern suburbs of Adelaide in the Liberal Party saying, “If Jim Durden wins, there’s only two safe seats in Adelaide, Sturt and Boothby, and I don’t really have any claim on Boothby so maybe I should be running.”

Chris Pyne:

Because secretly I was planning always to be running. They all said, “Oh yes, you must give it a go.” So in January I nominated against Ian in 1992, and got preselected on April 28th 1992, and it was the most hideous preselection. When you say I blasted my way in, it was a record breaker for South Australian hideousness. We had two appeals to the Party Appeal Tribunal, we had QCs and barristers and lots of terrible media, an independent liberal ran against me, Michael Pratt was the independent liberal and there were no confidence motions at every meeting and it was just ghastly. But, on March the 13th I raised the trophy above my head and I had won. So yes, I did blast my way in and at the time it seemed kind of like this is what you’re supposed to do.

Misha Zelinsky:

And looking back on it now?

Chris Pyne:

Looking back at it now I think Misha, I must have been completely crackers to think that a 24 year old would end up in parliament and they should then be chosen soon after for the ministry. When I arrived in Canberra of course I was a bit like a fish on a bicycle. John Howard would have looked at me thinking what am I supposed to do with him? The first thing I’m going to do is keep him out of trouble because 25, I mean I’m not sure how old you are but when you’re 25 you think you know it all. Of course you don’t.

Misha Zelinsky:

You do. I’m 37 now but I certainly did at 25.

Chris Pyne:

And because you don’t know very much so I think I probably arrived with a lot of affront, and I was fortunate to be taken under the wing of people like Robert Hill and Amanda Vanstone and Steele Hall and David Joel and of course they quickly snapped me up and popped me in their house in Kingston, Hall, Joel and Hill. So they kept an eye on me and that’s the way it went. I stayed there for 26 years.

Misha Zelinsky:

And so you mentioned John Howard.

Chris Pyne:

Yes.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now, your first term in ’93 through to ’96 was a pretty tumultuous term, there was a lot of leadership changes.

Chris Pyne:

It was, yes.

Misha Zelinsky:

In your book you reflect on the fact that you famously chose to back a different horse in the leadership challenges up against, when John Howard was making his comeback to the leadership. Do you want to take us through that and how that impacted on your time in the Howard government, I suppose?

Chris Pyne:

Well, I made a kind of rather catastrophic choice in March 1993. John Howard ran against John Houston straight after the election so it was literally mid-March, and he came to see me and said he was seeking my support and we had quite a lot more in common than people probably thought, because I’m a small liberal South Australian, and he’s a conservative New South Welshmen, but he’s right about certain socially conservative issues like euthanasia and abortion and things like that, and stem cell research, I was always pretty conservative.

Chris Pyne:

So he asked for my support and I said, “Well of course, John, you’re yesterday’s man and we’re not going back to you and the best thing you could do really is probably get out of politics and find something else to do.” And remember he was 48, so I’m now 53 so I’m thinking to myself now what a complete fool he must have thought I was. I thought it was tremendous because I’d always been a peacock person, I was on the federal executive of the parties, a peacock person and state executive in South Australia as a peacock person and all of my general group were all peacock people. So I thought I’d really kind of nailed it. I went home and told everybody who were all speechless of course, and said, “You did what?”

Chris Pyne:

I told them and they said, “But you know, he’ll never forgive you.” I said, “I don’t care, he’ll never be the leader again. He’ll be gone.” They said, “Oh my goodness, but that’s shocking.” They said, “He’ll never get over it. And he might be the leader.” I said, “Don’t be ridiculous, of course we’re not going to elect John Howard.” I was the last person still trying to find a candidate to run against John Howard. Two years later we took over from Downer and actually he wrote in his book, Howard wrote in his book that I was still trying to find Peter Reith to run against him because I was so aghast of course that he’d come back, and he’d never forgiven me, understandably so, for being so rude, which it was, it was rude.

Chris Pyne:

He didn’t really forgive me for a long time. I think he also thought, well, I’ve got four cabinet ministers from South Australia, and McLaughlin and Hill and Vanstone and Downer and then Minchin, and he’s very young, so it’d be very sensible if we just let him kind of find his feet for a while. So I found my feet for 10 years, but luckily because I’d started so early I was only 35 when I finally had found my feet and became a minister.

Misha Zelinsky:

And you and John Howard’s relationship, did it recover over the years?

Chris Pyne:

Oh yeah, completely. Well, because obviously he was a very tremendous success, he was prime minister for 11 and a half years, so I think he’s a pretty happy fellow, and in his post political career he’s clearly a happy person in a good place, unlike some prime ministers.

Misha Zelinsky:

Not a miserable ghost.

Chris Pyne:

Not a miserable ghost. And I think over time, well he always thought I was good at attacking the labor party. So that counts for a lot, as you know, in politics. If you can swing the cudgel against your opposition.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, against your own as well.

Chris Pyne:

And against your own side as well, I mean there’s a certain level of respect that you gain from being able to do that, and he knew I was pretty good at that. So he gave me that job of investigating the electoral fraud of the Queensland Labor Party in 2001, which I did, and John Faulkner and I became great mates. Not because he liked what I did but because he rather respected my complete lack of regard for the rules. And then after that, Howard appointed me to the Department of Secretaryship and then the ministry. So yeah, no, we definitely… And now when we catch up we always have a good chat, so there’s no problem with me and John Howard.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well it’s good to know.

Chris Pyne:

’93 is a long time ago.

Misha Zelinsky:

That’s true, that’s true. So you make your way to the senior team by the time the Howard government loses in ’07, but then you become a very senior part of the Abbott opposition, once Abbott gets into the leadership. Now, that, the second term of the Labor government with Gillard as prime minister and it’s a minority government, was a pretty brutal time, it was remembered as a brutal time in Australian politics.

Chris Pyne:

It was.

Misha Zelinsky:

You were the leader of opposition business so you’re leading the opposition in parliament.

Chris Pyne:

I was the spear tip.

Misha Zelinsky:

Indeed. So what are your reflections or observations of that time?

Chris Pyne:

It was messy and ugly. It was a really ugly period. The Liberal Party doesn’t like being in opposition because we regard ourselves as the managerial class, so managers need to make decisions and get things done. So the problem with opposition is it really goes against the grain of most liberals who go into politics.

Misha Zelinsky:

Labor doesn’t like being in opposition either, despite what you may-

Chris Pyne:

No but they’re good at it, they’ve done a lot of it. They’re very good at being in opposition.

Misha Zelinsky:

Oh man.

Chris Pyne:

Whereas the liberals find it very hard. So whenever we’re in opposition it’s a terribly bad time for the Liberal Party, and we change leader constantly and one side’s always trying to take over from the other, and good people fall by the wayside, which is always a bit of a pity in life, not just politics. And you lose elections and people give up and think I’m going to get out because there’s no point in staying or sticking around here. So there’s a pretty unhappy kind of atmosphere when you’re in opposition in the Liberal Party. And if the leader doesn’t look like they’re going to win, the party has no compunction about cutting them down. Whereas Labor will stick with a loser leader forever, like they did for Arthur Calwell and people like that and Dr. Evatt. I’m not just talking about recently, I mean like a long time ago.

Misha Zelinsky:

That was the history, certainly, before the [crosstalk 00:11:15]

Chris Pyne:

And they stuck with Gough and then they stuck with Gough right through to 1977.

Misha Zelinsky:

That’s right.

Chris Pyne:

Because they couldn’t believe their luck.

Misha Zelinsky:

Changing it from Haden to Hawke was actually a big shift culturally for the party.

Chris Pyne:

Big shift, yeah, big shift. So opposition was awful and then in the 43rd parliament, of course, we felt like we’d won the election because we had more seats than Labor, which usually means you’ve won, and your party managed to suborn Robert Oakeshott and Tony Windsor of course, into supporting the Gillard government, which we found very galling because they were in two conservative seats, they had never voted Labor since federation. Yet they were both supporting a Labor government.

Chris Pyne:

So it was very difficult for people to get over that, and people think that the coalition used to attack Gillard all the time because she was a woman. It had nothing to do with her being a woman, it had with her having the job that we were supposed to have. Whether she had been a woman or a man didn’t make the slightest difference. We just felt that she shouldn’t be the prime minister because Tony Abbott should be, and that Robert Oakeshott and Tony Windsor should have supported us and logically, that’s pretty fair. Could you imagine the men before Wollongong and the men before Newcastle, supporting a Liberal government to stay in power and Labor thinking oh that’s fine, no problems with that. It’s not going to happen.

Chris Pyne:

So we didn’t feel that way, we felt very annoyed about it, and so therefore that came out a lot in the vindictiveness of the 43rd parliament, and then Peter Slipper became the speaker and it was taking one of our numbers off the floor which made it even worse. The whole Craig Thompson thing was really unpleasant, and of course if Gillard had had a… if the prime minister had had a majority to speak of, they would have asked Craig Thompson along before but they couldn’t so they were clinging to this politically very unattractive corpse, really. Not a corpse, but politically unattractive person, dragging it around for… It must have gone on for 18 months, the whole Craig Thompson saga.

Misha Zelinsky:

Yeah, I’m just trying to think. It certainly went for a while.

Chris Pyne:

Oh it was ghastly.

Misha Zelinsky:

It was a political millstone.

Chris Pyne:

Shocking. So that’s why the 43rd parliament was so unpleasant and as I write in my book, our view was since the Labor government has really stolen the election from us by taking-

Misha Zelinsky:

I’m not sure I can agree with that.

Chris Pyne:

No of course not, by taking Oakeshott and Windsor.

Misha Zelinsky:

I mean they’re entitled to make decisions as parliamentarians.

Chris Pyne:

Of course, yeah. And we’re entitled not to like it. So we felt well it’ll be war on all fronts at all times, and that’s what we did, and I was the kind of field marshal. Which I’m not particularly proud of, by the way.

Misha Zelinsky:

Do you look on it as a time that you would take back or just you had to do a job so you did it.

Chris Pyne:

I had to do a job so I did it. Our job was to make the government’s life as unbearable as possible because they had done the wrong thing by democracy, is to give these tub thumping speeches about how it was the greatest crime against democracy since King Charles had arrested the speakers of the House of Commons.

Misha Zelinsky:

Engaging in a touch of hyperbole.

Chris Pyne:

But sometimes I used to have to get myself into a rage on the basis of not very much to go with. So getting into a bit of a hyperbole would probably be one of the few things that could fill the time, I think. [crosstalk 00:15:06] I opposed the sitting schedule once, things had got so crazy.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well you guys also were denying pairs, as I recall, as well.

Chris Pyne:

Not really, we never denied a pair, there was talk of denying pairs, but we didn’t deny pairs at all.

Misha Zelinsky:

No? I’m trying to remember.

Chris Pyne:

We didn’t. There was a lot of talk about it but we didn’t do that. Not unless somebody was clearly trying to… People still get pairs refused if they haven’t got a good excuse. You can’t just hop in a bus and go on a picnic and ask for a pair. People need pairs because they’re sick or something or they’ve got some particular family thing that they’re doing.

Misha Zelinsky:

It makes it hard, though, right? I mean just reflecting, the government’s got tight numbers now, it does make it hard for ministers to do their jobs when they can’t sit on their toes around you’ve got to make a vote in house and it does give oppositions opportunity to wreak havoc, right?

Chris Pyne:

Yeah. But the parliament’s the parliament. This is what I always used to say to my colleagues when they say, “I want to go home, I want a pair to go home early.” So actually no, no. The parliament, everything other than the parliament is a bonus. You got elected to the House of Representatives and that’s your number one job.

Misha Zelinsky:

There 150 at the time, it’s not like there’s-

Chris Pyne:

And if you do anything else, that’s nice for you, and I happen to do other things besides being a member for 16 of my 26 years, but everything else is a bonus. So no, the parliament doesn’t exist for you to be happy, you have to be in the parliament as your number one responsibility.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now you mentioned your ministerial career. Now this is a foreign policy show so we could go through your whole career, but I think the defense portfolio is probably the area that I’d like to talk more about. Now, you spent a lot of time in your time in the portfolio, spending a lot of money but rebuilding a lot of capability. I’m kind of wanting to… Maybe you can explain very quickly, obviously it’s a huge area, but why was this necessary in your time and maybe you can give a sense of how big the scale of this project actually is. Because you’re talking hundreds of billions, now hundreds of billions are being spent through COVID, maybe it’s not such a big deal, people kind of lose sight of the numbers, but the scale of these projects is enormous.

Chris Pyne:

Well, I guess the best way to describe it is it’s the biggest buildup of our military capabilities since the second world war. And of course in the war, most of the budget’s turned over to the defense of the nation, so it’s a very big deal to have the largest buildup of our military capability in 75 years and it’s financially between now and 2030 about 270 billion. That’s just in capital expenditure, by the way, that’s not in running costs. When I was the minister it was 205 billion and so the extra 65 billion is those last three years between 2027 and 2030, because my period took that to 2027.

Chris Pyne:

Why is it necessary? It’s necessary because the world is a really dangerous place, and getting more dangerous. And it’s necessary because our great and powerful ally, the United States, has said very clearly to its allies we want allies not protectorates. The Abbott government, to its credit, and then the Turnbull and Morrison governments said, “Well, we agree with that.” It’s not fair to expect the United States to do all the heavy lifting in protecting our international rules based order and our values based foreign and defense policy. It’s not fair for candidates to spend less than a percent of their GDP on defense because they know that the Americans will always be standing alongside them. Nor for Germany to spend less than 1% or Great Britain.

Chris Pyne:

Countries that have held themselves out as the protectors of liberty and freedom around the world and then underspend in defense. So the Abbott government said, “We’ll spend 2% of GDP on defense.” That’s what the Americans asked us to do as allies, and they asked all of their allies to do that. Now I think at the time, when I left, we were about five out of the NATO plus allies countries were spending 2%. We are proudly one of those. Now it’s obviously well past 2% because of COVID. So it was necessary one, to be a good ally. It’s necessary two, because we live in a very turbulent world, and to break that down the Indo-Pacific is one of the most insecure places on the planet.

Misha Zelinsky:

You’ve said that there’s a prospect of war in the Indo-Pacific.

Chris Pyne:

I think there is a prospect of war in the Indo-Pacific. Of course there is.

Misha Zelinsky:

Why is that?

Chris Pyne:

Well, what I said in my speech to the Adelaide University graduation ceremony was that five years ago I think the chances of war were less likely and now five years later they’re more likely than they were in 2015/16. So I haven’t said that there’s likely to be war in the next 5-10 years, which some of the less sophisticated media have reported, I said that the chances are more likely now than they were five years ago.

Misha Zelinsky:

That’s probably true.

Chris Pyne:

That’s a statement of fact. The reason for that is probably primarily because China has discovered that it can press its claims over the South China Sea or Hong Kong or the Uyghur minority in western China and the consequences have not been dramatic. Sure they’ve faced some criticism around the world but nothing happened. So the next obvious place that China wants to unite with the mainland is Taiwan. Despite the fact that China has only governed Taiwan for four out of the last 100 years, 100 more actually, more than 100 years. The reality is they see it very much as part of China and it’s traditionally been a province of China and I think that that makes it a flashpoint.

Chris Pyne:

Do I think there will be a war in the Indo-Pacific? No, I don’t, but I think it’s more likely than it was five or six years ago and I think it would have been more likely if the Trump administration had been reelected, and I’m glad that the Biden administration was elected for that reason alone.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, they’ve got a different approach to allies, certainly, than the Trump administration did.

Chris Pyne:

And also Donald Trump had an unusual approach to foreign policy.

Misha Zelinsky:

To say the least.

Chris Pyne:

Well, unfortunately it’s so serious and it would be nice if it wasn’t, but like the Kurds, when he decided to throw the Kurds under the bus and allow the Turks to cross the border and reclaim that territory and we still don’t know what happened to all the Kurds in that area of course, that was really the end of it for me. I thought he’d done a good job on Iran and China, I think he’d done a poor job on North Korea, but that was the problem with Donald Trump, it wasn’t a coherent strategy. There were moments, flashes of great outcomes, possibly because the advisors that he had in those areas he agreed with, like John Bolton on Iran, for example.

Chris Pyne:

But these other really unusual decisions around the Middle East for example, I thought well he’s a dangerous person to have in the White House and that’s dangerous for us, because if China thinks they could unite Taiwan militarily without there being any significant consequences, I don’t think they’ll want to do that but they’re more likely to throw that dart if there was a Trump administration than if there was an orthodox administration in the White House, Republican or Democrat.

Chris Pyne:

So I think that was an important thing to change the government there, and obviously, as I said in my speech to the students, we have to work tirelessly to avoid a war in the Indo-Pacific because it’s not an academic exercise, it would be catastrophic and it would be catastrophic for Australia. So it has to be our number one priority in foreign and defense policy.

Misha Zelinsky:

And so we’ll get to China, I want to talk about in depth, you raised a lot of interesting points there, but sticking with the kit we’re buying, you were involved… Certainly there was some politics involved in it but the decision around the subs and whether or not we were going to go with the Japanese option or whether or not it was going to be built in Australia, the French sub won out. What is the reason why that is the superior choice for Australia? It’s a wonky question, we’re very interested and a lot of people who listen to the show are, and also probably a followup to that, is there a reason why Australia couldn’t have nuclear given that it has advantages in terms of its ability to stay under the surface of the water?

Chris Pyne:

Well, the French submarine won the contest because it came first in the competitive evaluation process, it’s as simple as that, so it was the best of the three offerings. Probably because the Japanese Sōryū class and the TKMS submarine were not designed for Australian conditions. Whereas the Barracuda class French submarine is of a size that suits Australia’s unique requirements, which in layman’s terms, basically we have two different seas and one is warm and one is cold, and we have a lot of coastline and a lot of sea to be responsible for, which means we need long range submarines and we therefore need to have large submarines and they need to be able to operate in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, and the Barracuda class was probably more able to be adapted to an Australian version, which has now become the Attack class.

Chris Pyne:

So the reason the French won was there’s no great science to it, they simply won the competitive evaluation process and the Japanese didn’t. And that’s what competitions are about. In the military not everyone can get the first prize, it’s not like the egg and spoon race in grade three. So that’s why they won and why not nuclear? Well, because we don’t have any kind of nuclear industry.

Misha Zelinsky:

We don’t have a sub industry either, though, right?

Chris Pyne:

Well, we do.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, we have the Collins class.

Chris Pyne:

We have the Collins class submarine.

Misha Zelinsky:

But that’s still a decision of government to really build that up, I mean you could do nuclear if you really wanted to.

Chris Pyne:

You couldn’t.

Misha Zelinsky:

Why?

Chris Pyne:

Because you’d never get a piece of legislation through an upper house in this country that would allow nuclear anything. We can’t even get a radioactive nuclear waste dump.

Misha Zelinsky:

Yeah, that’s right, South Australian Weatherill government looked at that a few years ago.

Chris Pyne:

Weatherill government, Wran government, every government. It’s the most obvious thing in the world, is to have a low level nuclear waste dump in South Australia or the Northern Territory.

Misha Zelinsky:

Bob Hawke was a big proponent of that.

Chris Pyne:

Big supporter, and we can’t even get that up. We’re close to it, I think, but it’s still far away.

Misha Zelinsky:

So you think it’s a politics thing rather than a capability thing? Are we selling ourselves short militarily because we can’t get the politics to stack up or are you comfortable with the Barracuda class?

Chris Pyne:

The Attack class submarine will be the regionally superior submarine. So we’re not selling ourselves short in a military capability sense at all, and the chief of the navy and the chief of the defense force gave us very clear advice along all those things. What you’ll find an issue in defense and foreign policy defense is that every retired commodore, admiral, and air force marshal, leftenant general, is an expert on what the government should be doing.

Misha Zelinsky:

And the media will give them a run if they’ve got something to say.

Chris Pyne:

The media will always give them a run so they only need one person out of the many, many, many thousands of people that are available out there to say something different to what the government’s doing and they’ll get a run. So you’ll always have an audience of people who oppose the F-35As or the combat reconnaissance vehicles or the infantry fighting vehicle or the kind of missiles that we use or the submarines or the hunter class, whatever it might be. There’ll always be somebody. But government’s got to make decisions. And you get this thing about nuclear a lot in the eastern states and it’s because New South Wales, for example, is not a manufacturing state. So they’ll talk about… I mean, there manufacturing here, but the manufacturing states traditionally-

Misha Zelinsky:

There’s a nuclear reactor here.

Chris Pyne:

Yes, there is at Lucas Heights, but it’s in their culture of course, states like Victoria and South Australia. So it’s such a parlor game talking about nuclear submarines, and I always have to stop myself from getting worked up about it because there’s no nuclear engineers in Australia, there are no courses at university in nuclear science or nuclear engineering, there’s no legislative apparatus for nuclear anything in this country. The Greens would never allow anything to ever get through an upper house. Probably Labor wouldn’t either. Then you wouldn’t be able to maintain and sustain your submarines in Australia, you’d have to send them to somewhere like Guam, because we don’t have any nuclear capabilities for sustaining and maintaining a nuclear submarine.

Chris Pyne:

You would need to be able to convince the public the have nuclear submarines stationed in Sydney or Henderson in Perth, and we can’t even get a nuclear waste dump in the middle of the desert. And yet apparently, the public are going to embrace this idea of nuclear submarines. It’s just never going to happen. It’s like me willing myself to have blonde hair and blue eyes and no freckles as a child, and wondering why it can’t be. That there are some things that can and there are some things that can’t be, and nuclear submarines will never happen in this country and it’s an argument for doing nothing. It means that you wouldn’t have any submarines while we had a 50 year argument about it. Now, we should have had a nuclear industry from the ’50s like other advanced, developed countries. But we didn’t, and we haven’t got it so let’s just get over it and get on with it.

Misha Zelinsky:

Okay. Reasonable points. We could go on with this, but reasonable points.

Chris Pyne:

I could talk about that-

Misha Zelinsky:

No, no, I’m sure we both could. But I wanted to get into China, the China challenge. It is the challenge, right, for modern Australia and future Australia. You were in parliament a quarter of a century, give or take.

Chris Pyne:

I know, 26 years.

Misha Zelinsky:

What as your observation of the way China changed during that time and the way the relationship evolved from perhaps it was not a great deal to a principle trading relationship to increasingly more strategic challenge.

Chris Pyne:

It’s an interesting question and it’s a good question and basically my political career traversed that period of change because Deng Xiaoping said in the 1980s, late ’70s, ’80s, he said China needed to hide its strength and bide its time. That really was the policy for 30 to 40 years, while China strengthened its middle class, its capabilities. People don’t realize, I think, that back in the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s, and then the ’80s, China was a terribly backward economy. You’d know that, because you study these kinds of things, but most people wouldn’t know. Very, very poor. And still going through famines and so on because of government policy and just because they hadn’t been developed as a developing nation like Australia or other countries like Australia.

Chris Pyne:

But in the last 40 years, that’s changed dramatically. I’ve forgotten the name of the town next to Guangzhou in the Guangdong province, but in 1981, the Chinese government decided to create a new city next to Guangzhou. It was a fishing village. Now there’s 23 million people there.

Misha Zelinsky:

Yeah, wow.

Chris Pyne:

And it’s the thriving financial center of what used to be the Cantonese part of China, which has now become much more multicultural. And over that last time, and in the time that I was a member of parliament, China quite rightly has taken its position as a first world superpower. It was always going to happen, by the way. China’s always been a superpower, except for those hideous 150 years.

Misha Zelinsky:

The so-called century of humiliation.

Chris Pyne:

Exactly. Which started with the opium wars and finished around the end of the second world war. Other than that period, which the Chinese feel very keenly and rightly so, China was a superpower and it’s a superpower again and there’s only two superpowers. Doesn’t matter what the Russians say or what anybody else says, the Russian’s economy is the same size as Australia. Slightly smaller sometimes and slightly bigger other times, probably because of iron ore prices are slightly smaller at the moment. China and America are the only superpowers in the world.

Chris Pyne:

So the west are talking about China as though it’s surprising, not quite right that China would want to flex its muscles, is a complete misunderstanding of the Chinese history and is extremely patronizing and suggests that people who say things like that still see China as the century of humiliation, whereas the Chinese see themselves, quite rightly, as an extremely sophisticated, intelligent group of people who are amongst the world’s leaders in the last several thousand years in new inventions and medicine and military hardware, writing and art and everything else as you’d expect, as a sophisticated civilization would be.

Chris Pyne:

So we have to get into that mindset. What we need to convince the Chinese of is it’s in their interests to support the international rules based order and it’s the international rules based order that has created the circumstances in which China can be a successful trading nation which is lifting its boats and lifting all its people out of poverty. It’s not a coincidence that that’s happened, it’s because of the west and China cooperating economically through the international rules based order.

Chris Pyne:

And that needs to flow through to the way they see their position in the world as a superpower, and that everybody can get along and everybody can keep lifting their people out of poverty and getting better educational health and housing outcomes, and that therefore military conflagration is in no one’s interests.

Misha Zelinsky:

It never is, though, right. You’ve painted the picture there almost, the old thesis of China’s going to rise economically and then become democratic and be integrated into the-

Chris Pyne:

I don’t know if it will or it won’t.

Misha Zelinsky:

I mean, evidence [crosstalk 00:35:19] Yeah, sorry. Evidence seems to suggest today on Xi Jinping that that’s not happening.

Chris Pyne:

Not happening, no.

Misha Zelinsky:

So how does the world deal with this challenge? Because the Chinese Communist Party is asserting its Chinese power and I think the world can reckon with a Chinese superpower but it struggles to reckon with an autocratic, outwardly projecting nation that doesn’t respect democratic neighbors, et cetera. So how do you actually reckon with that challenge?

Chris Pyne:

Well, 20 years ago I was definitely in the party of people that thought that the economic liberation of China would lead to political liberation.

Misha Zelinsky:

I think most people were.

Chris Pyne:

I think most people were. And I think the west approached it that way with absolutely every goodwill and intention. What we’re facing now is a Chinese Communist Party that is quite happy to have the liberalization of the economy but doesn’t appear to have any great interest in the liberalization of the polity in which they live. Now, whether that will continue forever, I don’t know. China today is very different to the China of Mao Zedong, it’s different to the China of Deng Xiaoping. Will the China of the next regime be different to Xi Jinping’s? Probably.

Misha Zelinsky:

But we don’t know when that will be because Xi Jinping’s now the ruler for life, right? That in itself is a big shift.

Chris Pyne:

Well, that’s right. But time keeps moving regardless, and Walt Disney has been cryogenically frozen but I think he’s still waiting a bit to come back. Unfortunately, time moves on and there will be change. And look, I trace it back to Tiananmen Square actually, which most people don’t talk about of course because it’s quite a painful period in China’s history. I think before Tiananmen Square, China was definitely on a path to economic and political liberalization, and that Tiananmen Square was such a shock to the rulers of the Chinese Communist Party that they realized that democracy and the Chinese Communist Party probably couldn’t coexist.

Misha Zelinsky:

Not in the way that they understood it.

Chris Pyne:

Correct. So I think that all came to something of a shuddering halt. That said, if you travel in China, I don’t know if you’ve traveled much in China?

Misha Zelinsky:

I haven’t.

Chris Pyne:

I’ve traveled in China. It isn’t a monolithic, a homogenous CCP hard faced society. Like most major countries of the world, the capital is the most reflective of the government, so Beijing is clearly definitely a government town. But the further you get away from places like Beijing to the commercial places in China, like Shanghai and Guangzhou and so on, it is much more free than you would expect from what you read in the media.

Chris Pyne:

So I’m very optimistic about China. I don’t think there will be a war but I think we need to be extremely hard headed about what we want in the Indo-Pacific, and then we need to make sure China doesn’t misunderstand our position.

Misha Zelinsky:

So then how do we deal with… At the moment we find ourselves in the midst of Chinese trade punishment or coercion, however you want to frame it. You’ve also got enormous examples, certainly over the last few years, around foreign interference, gray

Misha Zelinsky:

type of tax. How do we actually push back on that in the way you’ve described? How do you actually explain to China that this is unacceptable in a way that is politically viable as well?

Chris Pyne:

Well, we’re fortunate Misha because we have economic resources. So a country like Australia can invest in its defensive capabilities, and we have, especially in the last five or six years. Even if there was a change of government, I think it would be hard for Labor to reverse a lot of that. I think some of the people in the-

Misha Zelinsky:

Labor’s very supportive, I mean the sub thing for example is largely bipartisan, I think, right?

Chris Pyne:

Yeah. But you’ve got a left who doesn’t really like that, and we don’t. So the last time-

Misha Zelinsky:

I love the left, those that are listening.

Chris Pyne:

The last time the Labor Party was in power they cut spending in defense dramatically in real terms by 19%, which was quite awful, and as we know got down to 1.56% of GDP. But I don’t think they could do that again, because one, there’s so many decisions are being made, and two I don’t think the people who fill the positions in Labor these days would see that that was a good thing to do. And as we already discussed, the foreign and defense structure that we currently face is different to what it was when the Gillard and the Rudd governments were in power.

Chris Pyne:

So we have to invest in those capabilities to defend us in the gray zone, in the cyber world. We have to make sure that, and we are doing this, and this is all bipartisan, things like the Australian Signals Directorate and ASIO and ASIS and the Office of National Intelligence are all properly funded and supported. The smartest people are being employed there that we are getting cutting edge capabilities and technologies for defensive and offensive cyber. Because that’s what other countries will understand, they will recognize that Australia is not running down its capabilities, in fact it’s doing the opposite, and that therefore our interests need to be taken seriously.

Chris Pyne:

And our interests are not, we’re not asking for territorial gains or anything, we want free and open markets, we want free movement in the sealanes of the Indo-Pacific and the air spaces, we want free movement of people and money, open trade. These are things that will actually be good for us all and that’s why I’m optimistic because the human condition is to want to do better. It’s not the human condition to want to go to war. It’s kind of the last thing anybody wants to do.

Misha Zelinsky:

And so there’s what we want and there’s what we can get. Australia by itself, we’re an important country, we’re a middle power, we’re a wealthy nation, but numerically small. We’ve got a good regional defense structure, et cetera. But do you see in terms of, you talked a lot about Indo-Pacific, which is a relatively new construct but the Quad, you know United States, Japan, India, and us. Do you see that as a big part of this architecture of keeping China honest in its interactions with the rules based order in the way you’ve described?

Chris Pyne:

I don’t see the Quadrilateral as a containment policy. I don’t think that would be in anybody’s interests. I think it’s a useful structure for four like-minded countries that see the Indo-Pacific in a similar way, Japan, India, Australia, and the US. I think it will become an important tool, if you like, in the shed of things we can use to do exactly what I said before, free and open markets, liberal trade policies, et cetera. It isn’t a military dialogue, it is a dialogue. Although the Malabar military exercises are, I guess, the extension of the Quad dialogue but it’s not formal, but it’s an important military exercise in the Indian Ocean.

Chris Pyne:

I don’t think it’s nearly as important as the Five Eyes, though. Because there’s nothing that separates the Five Eyes on any policy matters of significance. Obviously New Zealanders don’t like nuclear ships visiting them, the English ships don’t have to visit them. But the Five Eyes is probably… Well, it’s not probably, it is our most important defense relationship because the sharing of information and intelligence is the surest way to avoid mistakes.

Chris Pyne:

As the minister for defense and before that in the defense portfolio, I used to say I think the more intelligence everyone gathers from all sides, we don’t want to be spied on by anybody of course, but the reality of the world-

Misha Zelinsky:

It’s happening.

Chris Pyne:

The reality of the world in which we live because of satellites and so forth, it’s hard to avoid. But more information leads to more considered decision making and removes misunderstandings. Wars in the past have started because of misunderstandings. The first world war is probably the most classic example of nations not being able to stop mobilization once mobilization had begun despite the fact they didn’t want to have a war, and all ending up for four years with the flower of Europe being slaughtered, which could have been avoided.

Chris Pyne:

So the good thing about intelligence gathering and therefore supporting our apparatus and agencies that do so is that it avoids misunderstandings. So I think we need to keep investing in that as an important priority, and we need to be able to defend our interests, but also we need to do that in concert with our friends and allies in the region. So ASEAN’s very important, the Five Eyes is very important because it’s an intelligence sharing structure, and obviously there are five anglophone countries and they all have a history, they all come from the same route, which I used to say to the English with that emphasis, as a republican.

Chris Pyne:

But the ASEAN nations, they really do rely on a country like Australia by the way. Because they know we’re a very reliable friend. We’re the first country outside ASEAN to be in ASEAN, by the way. To be ASEAN Plus. Very early in the piece, too. So those relationships are important with the Singaporeans, the Vietnamese, the Philippines and others. To make sure that they know they’re not alone and that we need to act together. There are two superpowers but there are 20 odd other countries in that region outside the South Pacific, there’s 40 plus if you include all the countries of the South Pacific, but certainly in the Asian corridor there’s 20 countries that together, in operating in concert, can make a difference. So I’m a multilateralist as well.

Misha Zelinsky:

That I think is critical for Australia. Now, one final question on China.

Chris Pyne:

And you’ve got to be able to do it all.

Misha Zelinsky:

Yeah, absolutely. Walk and chew gum.

Chris Pyne:

It’s not a binary choice. Which some governments in the past, without mentioning, sort of felt that you’re either a bilateralist or you’re a multilateralist. Well, actually you can’t be one or the other, you’ve got to be all of it.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now, one final question on China relating to… A sort of ethical question for the west, but it also bumps up against politics, a question relating to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. This is a bit of a diabolical challenge for a lot of western countries like Australia, other countries increasingly around the world, Australia have not done it yet, but are calling out what’s happening there as a form of genocide. How do you see the west’s responsibility, countries like Australia, dealing with this issue that’s occurring, these horrible reports we’re seeing, horrible reports about torture of Uyghurs et cetera. How do we handle that when China makes it clear that it’s a red line for its regime, of the Chinese Communist Party in particular.

Chris Pyne:

It’s very difficult. It’s a humanitarian policy area and I hesitate to say it’s hard to get to the truth. I mean clearly there is a truth about Uyghurs being clearly a put-upon minority in China. The Chinese regime, the Chinese government has a very clear view that they’re not a put-upon minority. So there’s an argument that they’re not agreed facts. Which makes it difficult for governments, doesn’t make it difficult for amnesty or for humanitarian organizations to call out the Uyghur minority situation but it does make it trickier for governments. So what you’ve got to do when you’re in government is you need to put those issues on the table and discuss them like adults and say, “We are concerned about reports about Chinese treatment of particular minorities.” The Chinese will counter with, “We’re concerned about the reports of the treatment of indigenous people in Australia.” And they’ll point to-

Misha Zelinsky:

That’s about whataboutism though, right, isn’t it, in a way?

Chris Pyne:

Well of course, and it’s about they’ll point to indigenous deaths in custody and all these other things.

Misha Zelinsky:

Which is shocking but nevertheless are reported and understood-

Chris Pyne:

I’m not putting them on the same level, of course not. But I’ll say that’s what the Chinese government will counter with, and we obviously have our houses well in order as any country can on these matters and always try and do better. There’s no suggestion that there’s any Australians persecuting minorities.

Chris Pyne:

But in diplomatic discussions and meetings with ministers of defense, do you stop the discussion about the Uyghurs and not move on to cooperation and South China Sea and Taiwan and Southeast Asia, or do you say right that’s our view on that and you know our view, and then you have to obviously move on to other matters. So you maintain your ethical values based foreign policy and defense policy, but we’re not Switzerland, we’re not Sweden. We do live in the Indo-Pacific. We do have to get along with our neighbors. And we do have to find ways to engage. We can’t decide that we’re not going to engage with Beijing because of the Uyghurs. So we just don’t have those choices. You have those choices if you’re a member of Greenpeace, but you don’t have that choice if you’re a member of the Australian government.

Misha Zelinsky:

You can see increasingly the world is taking the view that it’s prepared to call the CCP out on this question.

Chris Pyne:

They’re doing that, the world is doing that.

Misha Zelinsky:

Should Australia join them?

Chris Pyne:

We have done that.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now, we can probably talk about that a lot as well but we’ve got to keep moving along.

Chris Pyne:

It’s difficult to talk about genocide, because it’s too easily thrown about, this phrase genocide. And people are still arguing about the Armenian genocide because the Turks say that there wasn’t an Armenian genocide, and of course the Armenians go clearly the evidence is that there is, was.

Chris Pyne:

At the end of the day, how is it going to advance the interests of anyone to keep talking about semantics? About words like genocide or not genocide. Terrible things have happened to people throughout history, whether it’s the Armenians or the Jews, and we have to learn from those terrible mistakes, not debate them endlessly.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now I want to switch back for the last part of the show to your career. In your book-

Chris Pyne:

That’s a good thing.

Misha Zelinsky:

Your favorite topic, no? In your book you talked about wanting to be prime minister throughout your career. In the dying days of Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership, as that was playing out, you reported that a colleague said to you, “You know it can’t be you.” As in you can’t be leader, you can’t be prime minister. How’d that feel, did that hurt?

Chris Pyne:

It didn’t hurt, no.

Misha Zelinsky:

How did it feel at the time, knowing that perhaps the ambition would never be fulfilled at that point?

Chris Pyne:

I thought that’s true.

Misha Zelinsky:

A politician who has self-awareness? No, come on mate, that can’t be right.

Chris Pyne:

I do have self-awareness. I’m a pragmatist, I thought to myself well of course it can’t be me because it can’t be Julie either. So I couldn’t be on the one hand saying that the moderates are going to have to back Scott Morrison because otherwise Peter Dutton will get elected, and as much as I like Peter Dutton, and I do, and we catch up a lot, and there’s nothing personal about my observations, I just thought that if he was the leader we wouldn’t win the election. Because I thought he would be popular in Queensland but not popular elsewhere. And I thought Scott Morrison will probably be able to straddle the different interests that support the coalition.

Misha Zelinsky:

Which has proven out, I suppose.

Chris Pyne:

Which has been proven to be true, of course, I should get a medal for it. And I thought, well Julie, obviously Julie, as much as I like Julie very much and I would have liked her to have been the prime minister, I couldn’t on the one hand be saying Julie Bishop’s not going to beat Peter Dutton but say oh actually you should support me, when I was in exactly the same position. I wasn’t going to get elected leader because I come from South Australia, I’m from the moderate faction, I’m very clearly a smaller liberal. It would have been very hard for the party to unite under me, it did under Scott, much to his great credit.

Chris Pyne:

So look, it wasn’t said but it was a moment where I thought to myself, yeah, that’s right. That opportunity’s never going to present itself to me, and they’re moving to the next generation. It was certainly the time that I started thinking that this might be it for me, I might have had my run. Because they’re not going to go back to me now, they’ve moved on to Scott and Josh. Scott and Josh got elected in 2007 or 2004 I think, in Josh’s case. It might have been 2007. No, I think it was 2004. And I got elected in 1993, I’m a Howard era minister.

Misha Zelinsky:

You need a 25 year old first NMP to tell you you can never be leader, mate.

Chris Pyne:

Well, I didn’t need it, I had one of my older colleagues and good friends. And I thought well that’s true, they’re moving on to the next generation now and I can either stay here and serve for another 20 years, or I could do something else. At 51 I thought probably it’s time to do something else. So yes, it wasn’t sad, it was just kind of… It was a pivotal moment.

Misha Zelinsky:

Looking back on your career, you had a lot of ups and downs, but any regrets? And perhaps what’s your best day and your worst day? I’m always curious about people that have had a long career in politics.

Chris Pyne:

My worst day in politics was the day that Malcolm Turnbull was defeated as prime minister.

Misha Zelinsky:

Why?

Chris Pyne:

Because Malcolm’s a star.

Misha Zelinsky:

He was a previous guest on this show. You just followed him.

Chris Pyne:

And Malcolm should have been prime minister for a long time and Malcolm was a change agent for the country.

Misha Zelinsky:

So why wasn’t he prime minister for a long time, if I can probe the…

Chris Pyne:

Because he wasn’t given the chance, really. He was always undermined by the people who he’d replaced on the first one. Not the people individually, but the-

Misha Zelinsky:

Group or…

Chris Pyne:

The group that was supplanted by Malcolm and his group never really gave Malcolm a chance. While they certainly didn’t initially undermine Malcolm, when Malcolm stumbled you can either protect the leader and help them or you can push them under the bus. And there were clearly a group of people in the party room who, whenever Malcolm wasn’t perfect or stumbled or made a slight error or caught the curb as he went around the corner, made sure that we knew about it.

Chris Pyne:

That made it hard, so it was a sad day because Malcolm Turnbull is the kind of person who should have been a longstanding successful prime minister, help changed the nation, moved it to another plane, and unfortunately he wasn’t given that chance to do so. Now his enemies of course, and his opponents will have a different take and they’re perfectly entitled to have a different opinion. My opinion was he was the kind of person that could be a great prime minister be he wasn’t given the opportunity, the free reign from some people that he should have been, and of course he made mistakes, we all make mistakes. Best day of my political career was April 28, 1992.

Misha Zelinsky:

Which was?

Chris Pyne:

The day I was preselected. I’ve never got over it. It was the greatest day of my political life.

Misha Zelinsky:

Given you said you went through a hell of a time it must have been a great victory, right?

Chris Pyne:

Oh yes.

Misha Zelinsky:

At a young age, too.

Chris Pyne:

I was 24. Obviously there were great days being sworn into the cabinet, the day I was sworn into the ministry with John Howard, that was a very memorable day because it was really just me and him because I’d replaced Santo Santoro if you remember. And so he and I went out to the government house together, and they had a certain poignancy given that 10 years before I’d cruelled my pitch. So there were other great days in politics, winning elections is always a great thing. But I won nine elections and I was cabinet minister and minister in different portfolios, so those days start to meld into one, whereas you only win one first preselection.

Misha Zelinsky:

Sure, no, I can understand that. Now, culture. A lot of discussion about political culture at the moment. You’re someone that probably thrived in parliament, you enjoyed the theater of political combat it would be fair to say I think.

Chris Pyne:

Definitely.

Misha Zelinsky:

So what reflections do you have on the challenges that we’ve seen in 2021 about the political culture and what is the answers in terms of improving it?

Chris Pyne:

Well, I think one of the reasons I survived in politics and left it in relatively good order with most of my colleagues, both Liberal and Labor and Greens for that matter, is because I saw it as a debate. So it wasn’t a personal thing. So my job was to talk about my arguments, and hone those to the best possible level and find the holes in my opponents’ arguments and highlight those and tear down their position. It wasn’t to be personal.

Misha Zelinsky:

Unless Labor wins an election in a minority government, right?

Chris Pyne:

But it still wasn’t personal.

Misha Zelinsky:

No, I’m joking.

Chris Pyne:

So I’d give lots of speeches in the chamber railing against the hideousness of the Gillard government and their illegitimacy, but nobody ever used to think I’d crossed the boundaries into being personal. And you know, one day-

Misha Zelinsky:

So you can play it hard without playing it personal is what you’re saying.

Chris Pyne:

One day I made a mistake and I accused Greg Combet of having a slush fund because do you remember the AWU workers slush fund?

Misha Zelinsky:

I do.

Chris Pyne:

And he was so furious about it.

Misha Zelinsky:

Greg gets very upset if he’s-

Chris Pyne:

Maligned.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, if his integrity’s called in question.

Chris Pyne:

Totally. He was so furious about it, I thought goodness gracious I’ve obviously touched a raw nerve there, maybe I’ve made a mistake. Anyway, so I asked some of my labor friends if I’d got that wrong, and they said completely wrong. That’s exactly the opposite of what Greg Combet would have done. So I rang him after question time and I apologized and he was very good about it, but that’s very rare. Most people don’t apologize in politics when they’re wrong.

Chris Pyne:

So I think there’s a difference between playing the ball and trying to win for your team and personal vituperative behavior. And I hopefully didn’t fall into the second. The problem in the parliament at the moment of course is that the culture does need change and there aren’t enough women in politics, and Labor has a lot more women than the coalition does, and that needs to change.

Misha Zelinsky:

Shouldn’t there be quotas?

Chris Pyne:

I don’t support quotas but that’s because I think quotas work against women in a different way, which is that yes they might win, get into parliament, but they’re looked at always as not necessarily getting there because they’re on merit, which I think is wrong but I think it’s a perception of some people and the South Australian Liberal Party, for example, has just preselected three women out of four seats, and three saved seats. It can be done with the right attitude from the leadership and from the party membership, so I don’t think quotas are necessary, but if they end up with quotas I’m not going to be upset either, it’s not something that I’m passionate about. But some people are, I’m not.

Chris Pyne:

I think there needed to be more women. When I became leader of the house I changed the sitting hours, so that we ended every night by eight o’clock, the adjournment would start at 7:30 and parliament would start at about nine o’clock in the morning because I thought these mad late night sittings to 11:00 or 2:00 AM or 4:00 AM were all completely crackers. I think the public thought it was all crackers as well.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, you can’t be making good decisions late at night.

Chris Pyne:

No, and everybody drinks too much because they’re stuck in the house and they can’t do anything and nobody wants to sit there at their desk working on a brief at 11 o’clock at night, so people would have a drink, so there’s too much of that culture. That’s dissipated a lot because the sitting hours changed. But it’s a funny hot house atmosphere. Have you ever worked in parliament house?

Misha Zelinsky:

Not in the federal parliament but I spent a fair bit of time there for work so I’m familiar with it.

Chris Pyne:

So it’s funny, 4000 people plus, all come together for 17 weeks a year, all away from year, and they’re there for a specific period of time, a specific job, and they’re all very similar people because they’re all political people. So it’s not like a village. Everyone calls it it’s like a village, it’s not like a village because in the village you’ve got the baker and the candlestick maker and the real estate agent and a whole bunch of people who don’t work and people who do work and kids who go to school.

Chris Pyne:

In that place, there’s 4000 people all very similar. And so it’s unusual. So it doesn’t surprise me that the culture is now being called out, I think it’s a good thing that it’s being called out. I do think that it needs to reset and I think the public want everyone to get back to governing and opposing, if you’re on the opposition, but I do think the solution to this problem is… I mean, the capital should have been in a major city. It should have been in Adelaide or Brisbane or-

Misha Zelinsky:

It was a deal, essentially, between Sydney and Melbourne that would have-

Chris Pyne:

It was a deal because the Sydneysiders didn’t want it in Melbourne and the Melbournians didn’t want it in Sydney, so they had to put it within 100 kilometers of the New South Wales Victorian border on the New South Wales side, so it kind of ended up being where it is and Canberra is a lovely city and I like Canberra, but it’s an entirely artificial community. It’s now become a proper city, to be fair. When I first got elected in 1993, when I first worked for Amanda Vanstone it was a bit artificial. But if it had been in a city like Adelaide or Brisbane, rather than Sydney or Melbourne, or if they’d been able to agree that it should be in Melbourne then of course it would have been different because people would have gone home. So they would have been working in parliament house but they would have gone home at night as opposed to motels or hotels or whatever, or share houses. So it would have been a different culture. Interesting if that would have made a difference to our politics. I think it would have.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now, could pin you down, chat here for hours and hours but we’re getting towards the end. Now, I can’t let you go without answering the famous lame question of Diplomates.

Chris Pyne:

Diplomates. That’s the lame part.

Misha Zelinsky:

Oh, indeed. It’s a lame pun with a lame final question and a terrible segue.

Chris Pyne:

Good.

Misha Zelinsky:

So I’m keeping with tradition. Now, the question of course is you’re an Australian guest, foreign guests have to invite Australians, but you’re an Australian guest so you can invite foreigners. Three foreign guests to a barbecue at Chris Pyne’s, who are they and why?

Chris Pyne:

And they can be dead?

Misha Zelinsky:

They can be dead.

Chris Pyne:

I would have Alexander the Great, Constantine and Napoleon Bonaparte.

Misha Zelinsky:

Wow, okay. Three big figures of history and a long way back. Why?

Chris Pyne:

Because I’d like to know what drove them to be such change agents. What made them think that they could take an army of a few ten thousands of Greeks and conquer the modern world and get all the way to India and think they could change the world in which they lived at the age of 20-something, and why Napoleon Bonaparte thought he could go to Egypt and create a new empire in the east and how he could think that he could transcend Islam and Christianity and create a new religion and a new civilization. It must take extraordinary self-belief. And Constantine changed the western world because once he initiated Christianity as the state religion of the empire, it was probably… I think it’d be too self-regarding to think you could have Jesus Christ over for a barbecue, so I would leave him out, but Constantine, he changed the world in which we live entirely because Christianity has been the greatest force for the shaping of the western world in our entire history. So I’d like to know why he thought that was a good idea.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, three outstanding guests at a barbecue, but you’ve been an outstanding guest on Diplomates so thank you for coming on the show and much appreciate it, Chris Pyne.

Chris Pyne:

Thanks Misha, thanks for having me.

Misha Zelinsky:

Pleasure.

 

Malcolm Turnbull: A Bigger Picture – Politics, Leadership and Government

Malcolm Turnbull was Australia’s 29th Prime Minister.

Before entering Federal Parliament, Malcolm had a distinguished career as a Rhodes Scholar, in law, media, tech, finance and public advocacy.

He’s the author of several books, including his autobiography ‘A Bigger Picture’.

Misha Zelinsky caught up with Malcolm Turnbull for a chinwag about his famous Spycatcher trial against the Thatcher Government, the failed ‘Republic’ Referendum vote in 1999, why Australia’s climate debate has been so bruising and who’s to blame for the inaction, his professional rivalry with Tony Abbott, why China’s bullying of Australia will prove to be unsuccessful, the problem with misinformation and lies in our public discourse, Australia’s attempts to bring big tech to heel, the art of leadership challenges, handling Donald Trump, fixing our political culture and why we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

As you can see, it’s a long and wide ranging chat and Malcolm is extremely generous with his time and insights – so we hope you enjoy it!

TRANSCRIPT: (Please note to check the audio against the transcript).

Misha Zelinsky:

Malcolm Turnbull, welcome to Diplomates, thanks for joining us.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Great to be with you, Misha.

Misha Zelinsky:

Obviously, lots of places we can start in a foreign policy chat with yourself, but I thought we might go right back a little to the beginning of your career, certainly in the public eye. Your first foray into foreign affairs is probably in the famous Circle Spycatcher trial. You were a lawyer taking on the British government about an author, former spy, looking to sort of publish his memoirs. I mean, I was wondering if you could detail us a little bit about your experience and what it taught you, I suppose, about taking on governments and foreign relations.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Well, Peter Wright, by the time I met him was in his 70s. He was old, he was frail, he was living in really impoverished conditions in sort of little farm just south of Hobart, a place called Cygnet, where he was trying to breed horses very unsuccessfully. He was living there with his wife, Lois, now basically living in a shack. Peter had been a MI5 officer, scientific officer, right through the Cold War. When he retired from MI5, the Brits doubted him on his pension or so he believed. He was not a public school boy, he was very much sort of working class kid who was just really brilliant at radio and he felt that the British establishment had never treated him like an equal. You know what, I think he was right. But Peter, had been convinced among other things, that I had one of the heads of the MI5, Roger Hollis, in the early 60s had in fact been a Soviet agent, like Burgess and Maclean, and Philby, and so forth.

Malcolm Turnbull:

In that period was a time of enormous paranoia well described by one writer as the wilderness of mirrors. Wright had a equally paranoid counterpart in the CIA called James Jesus Angleton. The problem was that they did actually end up suspecting just about everyone else of being a Soviet agent but there were enough Soviet agents to mean that their suspicions were not entirely fantasy, so that was a bit of a problem. Anyway, Wright had written a book, a memoir, of his adventures called Spycatcher. He’d written it with the help of a television journalist called Paul Greengrass, who is now a very famous film director. He’s done many of the Bourne films and other great movies. Anyway, they’d decided to publish it in Australia because they didn’t want to get into an argument with the British over the Official Secrets Act. Anyway, the British, when they got wind of this promptly got an injunction in the Australian courts to stop the book being banned. Heinemann, who are the publishers, had been advised by their lawyers, a couple of big law firms, I think MinterEllison was one of them, and a lot of silks.

Malcolm Turnbull:

I mean, just [Rodie Ma 00:03:51], Simon Shella, Jim Spigelman, the works, had all told them that they were not going to win, that their prospects were very, very bleak. They actually were going to give up the case and what happened was their London solicitor, who was this rather really charming guy called David Hooper, who was an old Etonian and honestly almost sometimes sounded as though he’d stepped out of a Bertie Wooster novel. He was very… he had amazing sort of British accent and was sort of affected a deliciously vague air about it. He was a bit of, I think to some extent, he was always slightly sending himself up. Anyway, Hooper had been recommended to come and see me by Jeff Robertson, who’d given them some advice in the UK. But I think Jeff’s view was also was that the case was a loser, but like a lot of lawyers on the left, I regret to say this, they often look to glorious defeats. Whereas, I’m interested in winning, whether gloriously or ingloriously.

Misha Zelinsky:

Chin up.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Anyway, I thought the case was a winner, as did Lucy, who was one of my legal partners at the time, as was my wife, of course, and we ended up agreeing to do the case for them for $20,000, it was a year’s work. I know it was a long time ago, but $20,000 is not a lot of money even in 1986. That was the only basis on which I’d do the case. Anyway, we took it on with our little team. Me and Lucy, with some help from David Hooper and some of the younger lawyers in my office. We basically took on the British government, they had securities up to the eyeballs, and they had one of the biggest law firms in Australia, they had the UK Treasury solicitor. We took them on and we won the case, then we won at trial, a court of appeal, and in the High Court. But it was a very interesting example of the hypocrisy of government, and in particular the hypocrisy of the British government. Because what became apparent was that, in fact the substance of Wright’s book had all been published before.

Malcolm Turnbull:

One of our defenses was to say, “Look, this is not confidential information. You can’t get an injunction to prevent the publication of something that’s in the public domain already.” But what was worse was that the Wright’s material had been published by a right-wing journalist called Chapman Pincher, in a book called Their Trade is Treachery. But we were able to establish that that publication had been enabled by Lord Victor Rothschild, absolute pillar of the British establishment, and that he had done so with the connivance of the British government who wanted Wright’s allegations about Hollis to get out into the public domain, but through the hands of a safely conservative journalist. It was the end… Anyway, the real problem was that the guy that Fischer sent out to Australia to give evidence, Robert Armstrong, got himself absolutely tangled up in the witness box. He was lying.

Malcolm Turnbull:

I mean, I suppose he would argue that he wasn’t lying, because he thought what he was saying the first time, before he corrected himself, was true but you have to have a very generous view of human nature to believe that. But he ended up having to apologize to the court for misleading the court and you can imagine the humiliation this caused the British government. I mean, this was a massive political drama in London. I mean, it was a big story in the Australian media, but it was five times as big in the UK. But there was a wonderful moment, a sort of cross cultural moment, I might just leave it there, where on the question of truth. Because Armstrong had written a letter to a publisher which was asking for a copy of this book, Traders Treachery. And said, “Oh, you know, we’d like to review it before it hits the streets,” but in fact he had the copy, he had the manuscript. In fact, they had basically conspired to get the manuscript into the public domain.

Malcolm Turnbull:

I might say, since that trial… I’ll come back to this. Anyway, I said to Armstrong, “Well, you know, you were lying, weren’t you?” He said, “Oh, no, I wasn’t lying.” I said, “Well, you know, where you’re telling the truth?” “Oh, well, I was creating a misleading impression, you know?” “Well, what’s a misleading impression? Is that like a ventridis or a half truth?” Then he uttered this line that he thought was very funny. He said, “Oh, no, Mr. Turnbull, I was just being economical with the truth. Hahaha.” As he went hahaha, I thought to myself, “Boy, you have misjudged your environment here, because the one place you don’t make jokes about telling the truth is in a witness box when you’re under oath,” and it was downhill from there. But there’s a very interesting postscript to this.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Because the proposition I put to them and I put to the court was, that the British government had basically authorized all this stuff to go out into the public domain anyway, that what was inspired capture was a load of old cobblers who had been published, and so, the case was futile all along, baseless, and it demonstrated enormous hypocrisy on the part of the British. To which Armstrong said, “Oh, Mr. Turnbull, that’s a very ingenious conspiracy theory that utterly untrue.” Well, not only was it… It wasn’t utterly untrue, it was actually true because in Margaret Thatcher’s authorized biography written by Charles Moore, Armstrong actually admits that the decision to get Pincher to write this book with revelations about Hollis, was a decision taken in number 10 Downing Street with the prime minister’s knowledge and the book, Moore’s book, quotes Armstrong, quotes memos, documents from the Thatcher government.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Obviously, I imagine they probably felt Pincher’s book wasn’t entirely what they had wanted, but he was set on his mission by the British government, he was authorized, the connection with Rothschild was made with the British government, Rothschild made the connection with Wright. It was just mind boggling hypocrisy and it was very interesting. I mean, I hope an Australian government would never behave in that way, I don’t think it would. I’d say another thing too which is an interesting cross cultural thing. The British could not believe that Armstrong was not treated differentially in the Australian courts. Even as a very old man, few years ago, he just died recently, he was in the broadcast news and he was saying, “Oh, Mr. Turnbull did not behave the way a British barrister would have behaved,” which Paul Greengrass, who was on this broadcast with him, he said, “Yeah.” He said, “A British barrister would have been utterly groveling and deferential to you,” because that’s what they used to. The truth is that Armstrong was treated like any other witness, the court, the judge presided over the court with good humor, and so forth.

Malcolm Turnbull:

But it was absolute, he got the same treatment everybody else did. But that wasn’t how it worked. It was an interesting case, but ultimately the lesson, the principle, I think that then got across and it was a very historic case in the sense, that it made the British, and I think the Australians too, realize that these secret intelligence agencies have to be more accountable. They can’t pretend that everything is a secret as everything else, and the public are entitled to know. If you want something to be kept confidential, you’ve got to be able to demonstrate that it is actually detrimental to national security were it to be published. It was a good blow for freedom of speech, and above all it was enormous fun. I’ve wrote a book about it, I think I’ve given you a copy of it. Which if you like to read courtroom dramas, it’s quite a good read I think.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, we’ll obviously get a little bit more about Spycatcher once we get to your term in office as prime minister. But on the way there, dealing with the British government yet again and Australia’s relationship with the British government, you were of course, the head of the Australian Republican Movement. Now, of course… Well, it was unsuccessful in pursuit of that vote, the yes vote went down. I’m kind of curious about your reflections about why we lost and would you have done anything differently as a result?

Malcolm Turnbull:

Well, Misha, I mean, the first thing you’ve got to remember is that virtually all constitutional referendums fail, right? It’s very hard to get the constitution changed. It is my theory for that, which I think was originally suggested to me by Mary Gleason, actually, but I think it’s right. Is that in Australia, we have compulsory voting, which is a good thing, really good thing, but it has one bad consequence. In a referendum, where you make everyone vote, you will have a percentage of the population who don’t know, don’t care, aren’t interested, haven’t read up about it. If they are very vulnerable to that change right? Because if you don’t know the consequences of a change, you’re not going to vote for it. I mean, if I said to you, “You know, I’ve got this amazing new technology that’s produced incredible paint, and I just want to paint your room with it,” and you haven’t had time but you’ve got to make the decision now, you would be inclined to say, “Oh, look, the room’s okay, I’ll just leave it as it is.”

Malcolm Turnbull:

So there’s a sort of element of you don’t know but know. That’s a problem, which is why you need, in a referendum situation, you need to have really overwhelming support. The other problem that we had was… That’s a problem in every referendum, unless it is so boring, so administrative, and literally nobody opposes it. I mean, the last remotely controversial constitutional referendum that got up was in 1946, so it’s a long time ago. Okay, the other problem we had was that the model that we took was one where the president to replace the queen and the governor general would be chosen by a bipartisan two thirds majority of a joint sitting of parliament. You know, that’s obvious because the role is meant to be a ceremonial, a political figure. That’s what you want and that’s one way of delivering that. But there was a move to have direct election, which we did not support.

Malcolm Turnbull:

I mean, Keating didn’t support it, there was hardly anyone on the non-Labor side of politics that supported it, apart from a few wreckers. But simply because you’re essentially using a highly politicized method of election to choose someone who you want to be non-political. Anyway, the direct electionists have also campaigned against the proposition. That was a classic example of allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good. I mean, just-

Misha Zelinsky:

Totally.

Malcolm Turnbull:

… just completely… Again, I mean, they weren’t all on the left, but it is a classic thing that the left do. I mean, not everyone on the left. I mean, the other great case in Australian history is the Greens voting against the Rudd government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme at the end of 2009.

Misha Zelinsky:

Malcolm Turnbull:

I mean, far out. I mean, if they had voted for that, they, together with the liberals that were still in the Senate that are still supporting me, would have been passed and an emissions trading scheme by now would have been so embedded, it would have been about as controversial as the GST. And every now and then people would say, “Oh, the rate should go up or down or sideways,” but it wouldn’t be this issue. And I was just staggered. The one thing if you can inscribe on every, I don’t know, pillowcase, at every would-be politician ever lays their head on, “Do not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.” It is such a… And its way of progressives, whatever character you want to describe them, so often screw up. Anyway, that’s basically why we lost. The question then is, what do you do now? My view is that you, firstly, timing and I think the timing will be when the queen’s reign ends.

Malcolm Turnbull:

But I think you need to first have a vote, which would be a plebiscite, it wouldn’t be a referendum per se. Where you put one method of election up against another and that presumably would be direct election versus parliamentary appointment and I think you just thrash that out. I mean, sure, I think you thrash that out for three months or whatever, uphill and downed out, and then you have a vote, then whichever model of election emerges, you say, “All right, we’ll now incorporate that in the formal Constitution Amendment Bill that will then go to the public in the referendum under the constitution.” Because I think you can’t fight on two fronts at once basically, that’s the problem.

Misha Zelinsky:

You’ve sort of said, “Look, we need to wait until Queen Elizabeth II passes.”

Malcolm Turnbull:

Yeah.

Misha Zelinsky:

I mean, why is that? Because my sense of it is basically, look, in the 90s, I remember Keating arguing for a republican, it felt inevitable. I was really shocked when the result was a nightmare. Then we’re told, “Oh, don’t worry, there’ll be a vote in the not too distant future.” Here we are, 22-

Malcolm Turnbull:

Not for me, Misha, I said these guys are lying. I mean, my conscious is clear. I said, “If you vote no, it means no for a very long time.”

Misha Zelinsky:

Yeah, and here we are, right? I guess the question is, no one’s really arguing for a republic. I mean, why, when the queen passes, will they suddenly be supporting ponies dropping away? I don’t get a sense that there’s a ground swell for it unfortunately, because we’re not seeing that argument in the public. And the queen will pass, there’ll be King Charles and the show will roll on.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Well, look, I’m not saying you’re wrong. I think you’re wrong and I hope you’re wrong, but-

Misha Zelinsky:

I hope I’m wrong too.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Yeah. Okay, but here’s the proposition. Ultimately timing is just about everything in politics. You can’t breathe political life into an issue that no one has any interest in. Or maybe you can but you’ve got to use enormous amount of political capital to do so and leaders are not going to do that. There’s got to be a sense of its time. It’s time to deal with this issue. Now, in the lead up to the Centenary of Federation in the 90s, we did have that sense of this is time and there was a whole lot of things being done to review the constitution, so forth, all of which came to now, I might add but anyway. But nonetheless, there was a sense of that and I think when the queen’s reign ends, when she dies or abdicates, it will be just an enormous watershed. I mean, the reminder that she’s actually reigned for longer than this now, reminder of that old republican poet, Victor Daley, he used to write in the Bulletin in the 1880s and 90s.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Wrote a poem about Queen Victoria and he said, “60 years she’s reigned, holding up the sky, bringing around the seasons, hot and cold, and wet and dry. And all those years, she’s never done a deed deserving jail, so let joy bells ring out madly and delirium prevail,” et cetera, it’s a great poem. But the point is, just as the passing of Queen Victoria was a epochal moment, the end of Queen Elizabeth, the seconds reign, will be this gigantic watershed. I think after that people will say, “Okay, that’s amazing, we adore her, she is one of the great…” I mean, obviously very passive and she’s not a political leader, per se, but her continuity and dignity is one that has so many admirers. It’s why I always say morals of monarchists.

Malcolm Turnbull:

But I think that will be a moment, Misha. I think at that point, people will be asking, “Do we want to keep having the king or queen of the United Kingdom as our head of state?” I mean, there’s all sorts of fascinating constitutional implications by the way, because what the Constitution says… The Constitution refers to the queen throughout and that meaning Queen Victoria of course, but it says, in the Constitution Act, it says the Queen means Her Majesty and her heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom. Which means, of course, that if Britain became a republic, the president of Britain would be head of state, which is like ludacris.

Misha Zelinsky:

Madness.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Yeah, ludicrous, right? But it also means, it’s also raises an interesting thing. If, for example, Scotland became independent, then the United Kingdom is no longer united, so that will pose some interesting questions. I mean, the Constitution itself is a very, very outdated document. I mean, it works but it works less because of what’s in it, but because of the way conventions have evolved. I mean, there is a still a provision in the constitution, for example, which says that the queen, which in the context of 1901 meant the British government, can disallow a law passed by the Australian Parliament and signed into law by the governor general within 12 months of its enactment. Theoretically, you could have an election and a new prime minister could come in and say, “Right, I am going to advise her majesty to disallow all of the laws passed by the parliament in the last 12 months.” There’s also a provision allowing the governor general to reserve laws for the queen’s consideration and that’s a provision called Reservation and Disallowance.

Malcolm Turnbull:

And why is that there? Well, that’s because in the days, 1901, when Australia was not a independent country at all, colonial constitutions had that power. Because it meant that the governor general or the governor, who was invariably a British official, could say, “Oh, gosh, you know, these colonials, I don’t particularly like this law, this might impact on British trade or investments. So I’ll just send that back to head office in London and see what they think of it.” The bottom line is that that constitution, you sometimes see people saying, “Oh, it’s the birth certificate for a nation.” That is nonsense, it was a colonial constitution for a country that was largely self-governing dependency of the British Empire, and our independence was acquired gradually. It’s actually an interesting question as to when? Is there a date and time when Australia became independent? There actually isn’t any one day, but we certainly obviously are and have been for many decades now.

Misha Zelinsky:

You mentioned already, the politics of climate change, I kind of want to get… It’s a big global challenge, it’s arguably defined your time in politics. I mean, we’ve lost a mark count four prime ministers to divisions over climate. Why did, to your mind, has just been so bruising from an Australian point of view? Because in 2007, Howard and Rudd both took ETS or competing emissions trading schemes to an election, Rupert was going to be bipartisan, you were the opposition leader. Rupert was going to be at… Of course the Greens voted it down. But why has it been so bruising particularly for the last decade of their politics?

Malcolm Turnbull:

Well, I think what happened was that sort of beginning 2008/09, you got a effectively a coalition of the right political right, the product called the Populist Right in the Liberal and National parties, the Murdoch media in particular and of course the fossil fuel lobby. Who essentially combined to turn what should have been a debate about physics and economics and engineering into one of videology. I mean, George Pell, the Catholic Cardinal and Archbishop… I mean, Pell was a great advocate for climate change denialism. Obviously, Abbott was the guy who succeeded me in 2009 who then really weaponized it. I mean, sort of there are a few fatal errors at that time. I mean, I think the fatal error of the Greens was blocking the CPRS at the end of 2009 and then Kevin’s fatal error was not proceeding straight away to a double dissolution, which he would have won. But for some reason or other, he lost his nerve.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Because, you see, the Emissions Trading Scheme at that point it still united the Labor Movement or Labor Party anyway, perhaps not all of the unions, including your own. But it united the Labor Party but it divided the coalition. And why he blames Gillard, obviously, I mean… but everyone was staggered by that decision. Then, of course, Abbott sort of weaponized it. I mean, he weaponized it and of course then in the election that followed in 2010, Julia made the absolutely staggering issue, staggering mistake of saying that an emissions trading scheme was same as a carbon tax. I told him, I wouldn’t name him so I didn’t name him in the book because he’s a friend of mine. But one of the very senior Labor politicians, who is a great trade union leader, his theory was that Julia said that because she wanted to distinguish it from Kevin’s Emissions Trading Scheme, and it was just a devastating mistake. Because she had said, “There won’t be a carbon tax under any government I lead,” and a carbon tax is obviously a fixed price on carbon. It’s $20 a ton or $25 a ton.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Everyone understands that an emissions trading scheme is different to a carbon tax. When people talk about a carbon tax, they’re invariably talking about it in contradistinction to an emissions trading scheme, where you constrain the number of permits to not allow you to emit greenhouse gases. And obviously, depending on all the forces of supply and demand, the price of those permits can go up or down, that it’ll vary. But she essentially framed herself, she should have been saying, “I don’t care if you use red hot pincers to tear out my toenails, I’m not going to say an emissions trading scheme is a carbon tax.” That was the last thing she should ever have said and she would have been right in not saying it. Abbott, then was able to present her as lying and all that sorry history began. By the time I became prime minister, the chances of getting putting a price on carbon was just, from practical political terms, zero.

Misha Zelinsky:

So you see-

Malcolm Turnbull:

But the fundamental problem, Misha, is that what’s happened is that this combination of right-wing politics, right-wing media, and the fossil fuel lobby, have essentially taken what is a matter of physics, global warming, and turned it into a question of identity or values or belief. Now, I can understand someone saying, “I have a deeply held view about gay marriage,” for example. I can understand someone who says, “The Bible says only men and women should be married and I’m against it,” now obviously I vociferously disagree with that but that you can accept that as a question of values, that’s a question… And we obviously had a vote on that and decision was taken. But saying you believe or disbelieve in global warming, it’s like saying you believe or disbelieve in gravity. I mean, it’s literally barking mad and dangerously so.

Misha Zelinsky:

Yeah. With the NEG, we talked a lot about the ETS and you’re one of the National Energy Guarantee which is your signature energy policy as prime minister. Without going into the ins and outs of it, do you think there might have been an opportunity just to force it all to vote and test the numbers-

Malcolm Turnbull:

Basically, the NEG had two parts to it. In some respects, the most important part from an immediate point of view, was the reliability mechanism, which has gone into effect. Which essentially meant a retailer of electricity needed to ensure that there was enough dispatchable power in their portfolio. In other words, the idea of that was so that you didn’t get a sort of a repeat of the South Australian situation where a huge amount of wind is built, that’s a good thing, and solar, but without the backup. Whether it’s batteries, or pumped hydro, or a gas peaker. But you’ve got to sort of get the right mix, okay? The other part, which is where the coalition blew up, was having essentially an emissions reduction element to it. And that was the part that had to go through the Federal Parliament to provide that the emissions intensity, if you like, of your portfolio generation declined in accordance with our Paris commitments.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Now, the question as to whether, I mean basically the position that I was faced with at the beginning of that sort of last week of my prime ministership was, there were so many people that were on our side that were going across the floor and voted against that, notwithstanding that it had gone through the party realm. Even looked like the Nats would vote against it. We discussed it in the cabinet, I’m going to describe all this in my book. We discussed it in the cabinet, and literally everyone said, “We’ve just got to put this on hold.” We didn’t abandon it, we’re very expressive about that. But the view was, I mean even my good supporters like Christopher and Julian and so forth, felt that the right we’re obviously planning to use this as a way to block the government, and what we needed to do was if you like, you could call it a tactical retreat or a pause, but maintain the policy, but just say, “We just got to handle this insurrection first and then we can come back to it.”

Malcolm Turnbull:

What happened of course then, events move much faster than I’d anticipated or I think most people had. They ended up being that coup and all of the chaos that followed and resulted in Morrison becoming prime minister. But look, I think it’s a… I know a lot of people on the Labor side have said, “Oh, you should have just put it to the vote.” Well truthfully, I don’t think it would have been very hard to do that for practical sense in a cabinet government, given the attitudes of my colleagues. The idea that Labor would have voted to pass it, I mean Bill was there, he could taste the prime ministership. He was so close, and he idea that he would have passed up the opportunity to defeat the government on the floor of the House, on an important bill like that and force an election is pretty naive. I mean, the part of the problem that I had was that there was a body of a group of people in the coalition and this was absolutely backed in by Murdoch, as he acknowledged. Murdoch acknowledged this and it’s pretty obvious, that wanted my government to lose an election.

Malcolm Turnbull:

They, as Rupert Murdoch said to Kerry Stokes, “Three years of Labor wouldn’t be so bad.” They were so determined to get rid of me, it’s amazing, I’m such a lovable character. But they were so determined to get rid of me and once again, get a prime minister that would do as he’s told., that they were prepared to put up with a Labor win. I mean this was Abbott’s crazy agenda, he-

Misha Zelinsky:

Heavens forbid a Labor government, Malcolm yeah?

Malcolm Turnbull:

What?

Misha Zelinsky:

Heaven forbid a Labor government-

Malcolm Turnbull:

Yeah, now I know. Well I mean, but normally internal insurrections, you don’t normally include as part of your plan, your own party being defeated. But that’s how insane it had gotten. You had Abbott’s agenda, which a lot of people at Newscorp, again as Murdoch knowledge supported. Abbott’s agenda was for the coalition to lose the election in 2019, whether it was led by me or someone else, and for him then to return as leader of the opposition and then lead the government back, in a sort of Churchillian comeback in 2022. Well, of course he lost his seat but-

Misha Zelinsky:

I ask you about, I mean your relationship with Tony Abbott and your careers in some ways, you look at it, you see almost two sides of one coin-

Malcolm Turnbull:

OH! don’t do that to me!

Misha Zelinsky:

Sydney Uni, Rhodes Scholars, you were the head of the Republican Movement, he’s the head of the Monarchists. Obviously, the leadership ballots, I mean what’s your reflections on those many years?

Malcolm Turnbull:

Well I mean Abbott look, I mean we’re very different people. I mean, you see I don’t think… you see, it’s interesting. Each of us think the other shouldn’t be in the Liberal Party. Because he would say, “Oh, Malcolm’s always been on the left, he’s far too progressive.” All of that, and I agree with Peter Costello. Tony Abbott was the first DLP Prime Minister of Australia. I mean, he’s not a Liberal at all. But you see, unfortunately, what’s happened to the Liberal Party with a capital L, is that it has become increasingly dominated by people that are not remotely Liberal. I mean, if you want to look at craziness, I mean, consider this, Victoria is the most progressive, smaller liberal State in Australia, right? Without question. The Victorian division of the Liberal Party has been largely taken over by the religious right, and similar has happened in Western Australia. I mean, there’s one of the few remaining Liberal MPs in the State parliament, was making this point in the press just today.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Unfortunately, one of the Liberal Party’s great assets, which is that it is a grassroots membership organization, has meant that it is very… Because it no longer attracts naturally a mass membership of the sort of middle class, professional class, small business people, it has become very vulnerable to take over by extremes. Like, the ACT another example. The ACT is a very progressive jurisdiction. It actually voted for the Republic, it’s the Labor Party, and the Green is are the dominant parties there. The ACT division of the Liberal Party, is just as right wing as probably more right wing than the Victorian division. Now the question then is, from your side of politics would be why can’t Labor exploit that? Well, you’ve probably just written a book about that, I think but-

Misha Zelinsky:

Available in good bookstores, yeah.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Yeah, available in all good bookstores. But that’s a major problem. I mean, Andrew Lee has made this point, always sort of riffing off Lenin actually. Lenin actually criticizing the Australian and New Zealand Labor Party’s or Labor Movements, said they were just Liberals, with a small L. They weren’t sufficiently revolutionary. But Andrew’s argument is that the liberal tradition in Australian politics is really better embodied in the Labor Party. I think the truth is, it’s been embodied in both, but regrettably less and lesser on the capital L, Liberal side of politics and I think that is a major problem. I mean, you see evidence with the issues that we’re confronted with today.

Misha Zelinsky:

Just switching gears slightly to another big trend that occurred in your time in politics, during your time as Prime Minister was the strange relationship with China.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Yeah.

Misha Zelinsky:

The relationship arguably was perhaps changing, but once you became PM, you made some big decisions, banning Huawei from the 5G network, the foreign interference laws; a bit of a line in the sand. I mean, in your estimations, why was this relevant? Had Australia’s attitude changed? Had China changed? I mean, why were those decisions made, and why are they relevant to the sort of increasingly bellicose nature of the relationship that we’re seeing now?

Malcolm Turnbull:

Well, look I think that the change really was from the China side. Xi Jinping, is a much more authoritarian leader domestically, and you see that whether it’s in Xinjiang or elsewhere in China, and he’s more assertive or belligerent, depending how you want to describe it internationally. The island building, unilateral militarization of artificial islands in the South China Sea is one good example, but there are plenty others too. I think China has definitely changed, there’s no question about that, or it’s leadership has, and Australia has responded to that. Look obviously, I’m a Liberal with a small L and a Democrat, so I deplore authoritarianism anywhere. But speaking of their international policy, I think it is quite counterproductive. I mean, I’ve got a piece of the Nikkei Asian Review just today, which makes the point that their foreign policy is completely counterproductive.

Malcolm Turnbull:

I mean, the pressure that they’re putting on Australia, which is designed to get us to mend our ways, and punish Australia for daring to criticize human rights abuses in Xinjiang or Hong Kong or expansionism in the South China Sea, what does it do? It has made Australian public opinion more adverse to China than it’s ever been, number one. It has made any changes or adjustments or nuances in government policy, impossible to affect and it alienates and creates enormous anxiety in other capitals. The object of foreign policy should be to win friends and influence people, and ideally do that without having to spend too much money, whether it is in grants or gifts or infrastructure on the one hand, or military hardware on the other. I mean, if you look around the region, around the world, where are China’s allies? I mean, it doesn’t have allies, it’s got clients. The United States, notwithstanding four years of Trump, still has enormous goodwill, and allies, and alliances and people with who, the countries who have shared values.

Malcolm Turnbull:

To be honest, I think that China blew an enormous opportunity with Trump. I mean, Trump’s erratic sort of conduct and his offending and alienating close allies and friends, sucking up to tyrants, all that stuff that he did, that was an enormous opportunity for China to be as unlike Trump as possible. That’s what they should have done. They should have appeared to be steady, accommodating, measured, all of the things Trump wasn’t. Instead they’ve become almost Trumpy in their sort of belligerence. I mean, I’ll give you a good example. The last year, Morrison said, there should be an independent inquiry into the origins of the virus. Now, look you can criticize him for saying that. You can say he didn’t need to say it. It was gratuitous, what was all that about? Was that just for the benefit of domestic public opinion in Australia? It would have been better off lining up a coalition to support it, even make all those criticisms, and let’s say for the sake of this discussion, that those criticisms are valid.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Nonetheless, the Chinese reaction was crazy. They should have let that one go through to the keeper. Absolutely, let it go through to the keeper or said yes, look we’ve noticed that but, we think the best body to handle this is the World Health Administration, which in fact, is what is doing. But instead they turned this into this huge issue. Why? It’s like somebody who does something to offend you, which even if it’s deliberate like a small thing, and you sort of declare to turn it into the biggest issue of all time, so it’s just so heavy handed and as I say, quite counterproductive. I mean, I think like most policy Misha, foreign policy included has to be judged on its outcomes. And I think that this sort of process of bullying Australia has been quite counterproductive.

Malcolm Turnbull:

I think one of the reasons I was really delighted to see that four leaders of the quad, India, Japan, US and Australia meeting together was, as I say in the Nikkei Asian Review today, that those images look good in their respective capitals. But the capital where I believe it will have had the most impact is in Beijing, because it’s basically sending a message to China saying, Australia and its democratic partners and allies are sticking together. Hopefully, they will take a different approach.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now, the other big challenge in the room, I suppose you got this sort of the China challenge. The other big challenge for democracy around the world, is this question of Big Tech, and whether or not governments can still prevail over these sort of essentially global monopoly platforms? I mean, in this big fight between Big Tech and big media, I mean who’s in the right here to your mind? How do we actually deal with these foreign owned tech platforms, and the impact they have on democracies?

Malcolm Turnbull:

Yeah, well look, I think that ultimately if government makes the law, then everyone has to comply with it, within that jurisdiction. The problem is that these platforms are transnational, they’re global. It’s often pitched as sort of government versus Big Tech, I think you’ve really got to focus on the particular issues. What is the problem that you’ve got? I mean, if for example, if you see what the media bargaining card here, I’m very uncomfortable with that. I mean, it does look to me and I think it looks to everyone, as though the government and the parliament have basically shaken down Google and Facebook to give money tot their people in the media, especially their friends at Newscorp. I would have preferred, I think a better approach would have been to have a tax on digital advertising revenues. Then rebate that to those companies that employ journalists, and as for those that don’t like Google and Facebook, take those proceeds and then distribute them to public interest journalism.

Malcolm Turnbull:

That would mean news outlets that actually complied with what we would require, whether it’s the Press Council standards, or there’s plenty of objective benchmarks of what is public interest journalism can be used. There is a reluctance though, frankly on the part of governments nowadays to make judgments about broadcasting or journalism. That wasn’t always the case. When I was a young lawyer working for Packer, television and broadcasting licenses were renewed every three years, and you had to prove you’re a fit and proper person, you had to demonstrate that the news reporting was balanced. America was out… It was Reagan that abolished that fairness doctrine in broadcast news in the US. We’ve got to… This is probably, we’re getting to the end of this podcast, but this is.. I mean, here is the big question. We have always assumed or justified free speech and the First Amendment, in the US context on the basis that in the contest of ideas, the truth will prevail, and yet we are drowning in lies.

Malcolm Turnbull:

You’ve seen that in America, I mean the biggest threat to the United States today is not international terrorism or Russia or China, the biggest threat is the internal political problems they face which are exacerbated in large part by the media, much of it owned by Rupert Murdoch. I mean, who could have imagined other than in some sort of apocalyptic novel or movie, the US Capitol being sacked by a mob as it was on the sixth of January, who had been told repeatedly by big media outlets, including Fox, that Biden had not won the election? If you think about it, if you had a large percentage of the Australian population, for example believing that the Labor Party had won the last election and not the coalition, who knows what you would get? I mean, people would get very angry and pissed off, there’s no doubt about that. The peddling of lies has consequences and it’s a big issue, again it’s probably too big to get into now, but I guess my punchline would be the freedom of speech does not mean freedom from responsibility, and obviously, we have defamation laws and so forth.

Malcolm Turnbull:

But we’ve also got to take, we’ve got to be prepared to hold people to account, and that might mean, advertisers have got to hold them to account, readers and subscribers have got to hold them to account. But we do not want to get a repeat of… we don’t we don’t want our country to be as divided, and with so much hate turned inwards on itself and its people as they have in the US.

Misha Zelinsky:

Just turn to sort of modern events, the culture of parliament is being discussed a lot as it relates to the safety of women. In your book you talk about the brutality of politics and you give some reflections on how tough it is on politicians; you talk about dark moments you went through after losing the leadership in 2009. The question I want to ask is in two parts; how hard is politics – is it too hard? Are we too hard on our politicians? And turning to the shocking revelations of 2021 and the March for Justice movement we’ve seen from Australian women who are demanding change – how do we fix the culture of our parliament, how do we fix these cultural issues more broadly?

Malcolm Turnbull:

Yeah, look I think it is. I think you’ve got to have thick skin to get into politics. I mean, it’s not for the faint hearted, or the thin skinned, we’re probably are too hard on our politicians, but they’re pretty hard on each other too, so it’s a rough business. I suspect that’s always been the case. I mean, the thing that is the issue that’s being debated at the moment, is this whole issue of disrespect of women by men, or men’s disrespect of women, men’s violence against women and of course, this being a real issue inside parliament. The Brittany Higgins case, of course has been the most sort of notable lately, but I mean, I wrote him about this. I talked about this when I was prime minister, I made changes to the ministerial code and but my observation of Parliament, was that the culture there, the attitude had far too many men, towards women reminded me of the 1970s or 1980s, maybe in the corporate world. I mean, it’s way out of step with modern society.

Misha Zelinsky:

How do we fix it?

Malcolm Turnbull:

Well, okay I think there’s at least two things you’ve got to do. On one side, you’ve got to have, I think they should in effect, leverage off the reform I made with parliamentary expenses. I remember I set up an Independent Parliamentary Expenses Agency or Authority, and basically, there hasn’t been a parliamentary expenses problem since then, because it’s properly monitored and accountable and so forth. I think you need to have an independent agency, which may just be three or four people, who deal with HR and that is where people can confidentially complain about issues, and it is where they would manage training, and so if there was an issue of bullying in an office, they could go in and make sure that everyone from the minister or the member down, gets the right training, and you basically, you’ve got to have that mechanism and you’ve got have clear rules. For example, if there is a report of an assault, that particularly something as serious as rape, then that is something that should be dealt with by the police.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Not may be that the victim says she doesn’t, or she most likely doesn’t want to proceed with it. But I think you’ve basically got to send a very clear message, that the full force of the law will come down on you, if you break the law, in particular in this context of men being violent or abusive to women. Now, that to some extent is having the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. It’s important to have the ambulance there, but the important be ideally, people aren’t going to be falling off the cliff, so how do you change the culture? Well, I think you need… That ultimately is a question of leadership, and prime ministers and ministers have to lead by example, so they’ve got to be held accountable for their own conduct, for the conduct of their officers. If a minister has a chief of staff who is bullying, the minister has to take responsibility for that.

Malcolm Turnbull:

He or she is the boss, so they’ve got to take responsibility for that. When I dealt with the Barnaby Joyce issue, and I changed the ministerial code to say that ministers should not have sexual relations to their staff, which I mean looking back now people would say, “Gosh, why didn’t you go further? Why didn’t you say more?” That was so controversial at the time. Most of my colleagues, sort of-

Misha Zelinsky:

Yeah.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Most of my colleagues thought it was an outrage, utterly unreasonable and, just an example of how old and out of touch I was. But I put in the foreword to those changes, language about respect, leading by example, values have to be lived and it’s worth. I mean, I’m sorry that Scott Morrison dropped all that, but because it is important, I mean that is, you basically do have lead from the top. I mean, because again that’s the only way you can change the culture. I’m sorry, it’s a simple answer, but the execution and delivery of it is complex, because you’re dealing with people, and people are complex, but there’s no other way to do it.

Misha Zelinsky:

Just wanted to ask you a question about your overall career. We could obviously talk about this cultural problem at length, whether or not actually while we’re on it. Do you support an inquiry or an independent inquiry into the allegations against the Attorney General?

Malcolm Turnbull:

Well, look the answer is yes. I totally get the all the legal arguments, everyone’s innocent until proven guilty, burden of proof. I get all of that, I understand all of that. But what I said at the time, and I noticed that this was described as being very hostile to Porter, it wasn’t. I mean, Misha, I’ve actually been in this situation with Packer back in the 80’s, when Kerry was accused of all sorts of things initially.

Misha Zelinsky:

Atlanta.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Yeah, under a code name and all that stuff, and the only way you can deal with this in a political way is to step up, give a powerful rebuttal and set out your version of events powerfully and cogently, and I believe it would have been in Porter’s interest to say, “Look, I didn’t.” Invite the prime minister to appoint a suitably qualified person to review all this material and give their judgment on it. Now, he’s chosen to bring a defamation action, but the problem with that, is that the defamation action A, will take years and years and years and B, the truth of the allegations may never even be an issue. It depends what defenses the ABC chooses to run, but I mean they’re very likely to have a sort of a qualified privilege, issues of public interest type of line of argument. I mean again, I went through this with Packer too. At the time, their lawyers, very distinguished lawyers, much older than me, who were saying, “Oh, Kerry should sue for libel and do this.”

Malcolm Turnbull:

I remember saying, “Well, we don’t have enough time for that. We’ve got to deal with this here and now.” I think this could be resolved pretty quickly, and then Porter would be able to say, “Well, I rejected the allegations. I said, why rejected them. The distinguished retired Judge, X reviewed it and came to such and such a conclusion.”

Misha Zelinsky:

You’ve mentioned Packer, there is a question I want to ask you about your career overall. I mean, you’ve dealt with some massive characters over the years, Packer, Murdoch, Rudd, Whitlam, Keating, Howard, Trump, Abbott, who was the hardest to handle out of these sort of characters, and why was is there a particular thing that makes them more similar?

Malcolm Turnbull:

Well, they’re all very different people, all the ones you’ve mentioned. I think probably the most difficult person to deal with was Trump, because he was the most powerful, and there was so much at stake. You’ve got to sort of… As an Australian Prime Minister, you’ve got to get on with whoever is the President of the United States, on the other hand, you’ve got to defend your national interest. There is a tendency for the professional diplomats to want to sort of go along quietly and not actually take up… They’re worried about a blow up, they’re very risk averse. But had I not gone toe to toe with Trump, we would not have maintained the refugee deal.

Malcolm Turnbull:

There’s a lot of people that are now settled and free in the US that would not be, had I not stuck to that, and equally, if you look at something like our steel industry, which I know, would be an industry many of your members would work in. Our steel industry was under real threat with Trump wanting to have a 25% tariff on Australian steel imports, as he was with a 10% tariff on Australian aluminium, and that was a very complex battle to keep tariffs and quotas off our exports.

Misha Zelinsky:

You have to handle him one on one in that situation?

Malcolm Turnbull:

Totally, it was absolutely one on one. I mean, look very often politics is a team sport and very often, as the leader you are backed up by a lot of people, often very much smarter than you who do all the groundwork. The problem with Trump was there was only one decision maker in the White House, and the staff in the White House kept on coming and going, going mostly. While I had some good input from Joe Hockey, the ambassador, and some other officials, and of course people in the steel sector, particularly, ultimately it just came down to me and Trump. Now that wouldn’t be the case with Biden, it wouldn’t have been the case with Obama. But Trump’s people, his key people, they did not want him to agree with me on the terms he did, they absolutely did not.

Malcolm Turnbull:

He basically went, I mean, I persuaded him that his own advisors were wrong on this point, and that was in his interest to have no tariffs and no quotas on Australian steel and aluminium, and really, it was a very one to one thing, and I’m not bragging about that, it’s just that’s the way it was. I mean, that’s the way that was the issue with Trump, because ultimately as I said, there was only one decision maker in the White House and we had a couple of people there, who were very sympathetic to Australia, but there were others frankly, who were not.

Misha Zelinsky:

Just the last couple of questions. You were saying your best day in politics, can you can you pinpoint those?

Malcolm Turnbull:

Well, I probably work out. There were a lot of best days, or great days. I think legalizing same sex marriage was one of the best days. That’s a very big social reform. Well, one I probably the worst two days is losing the leadership I guess, on two occasions, but-

Misha Zelinsky:

On both occasions?

Malcolm Turnbull:

On both, yeah. It was worse losing the prime ministership, but-

Misha Zelinsky:

Just on that, I mean, leadership challenges. I mean, talk about what goes through your mind and what’s the difference between the time, you’ve been in many. What’s the difference between the time when perhaps you’re seizing the leadership, versus when you’re playing defense and you’re on the verge of losing?

Malcolm Turnbull:

Well, it’s very different, it’s difficult and different. Yeah, I mean in each case, I’ve been involved in a lot of leadership struggles more than most people. Yeah, look it’s hard. I mean I they’re just very different, and you’ve got to be very careful, you got to think very clearly, you’ve obviously got to do your homework. But when you are a challenger, you’re in much more possession of the relevant facts than when you’re on defense, so the so the problem is, it’s always an advantage to have the initiative. The challenger always has that advantage, and particularly, where you are very vulnerable as a leader is if your challenger is reckless, and they actually don’t care whether they blow the joint up or not.

Malcolm Turnbull:

And this is again one of the real flaws and problems right at the heart of the coalition, right in its DNA nowadays, is that you’ve got that right wing group, which is massively supported in the Murdoch press. I’m not trying to sort of echo Kevin, but what he says about Murdoch is right. But they back that in, and they actually don’t care if they blow the joint up, and so that is terrorism without guns and bombs, and it’s very dangerous. Now, I don’t think you’ve got quite the same problem in the LP. But, I’m not an expert on Labor Party-

Misha Zelinsky:

Oh, leadership challenges are brutal on any side of politics.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Well, yeah and I mean the reality is that sometimes you do have to change the leadership. I mean, leadership changes that are driven just by personal ambition, can often be very damaging. But sometimes the leader just can’t deliver, and somebody else can do a better job, and there’s been plenty of cases of that. I mean, the interesting thing about the switch from… When I took over from Abbott, our numbers went through the roof, that was clearly from a political point of view, the right call. When I was overthrown, the coalition numbers went south and stayed south for a long time, but ultimately you can never underestimate people’s capacity to lose elections and Shorten lost that election, and part of it was personal, and part of it was as you know, some very misguided policies.

Malcolm Turnbull:

I don’t think climate was a negative for you, I have to say but I think the franking credits stuff was just staggering. It was so out of touch, I mean I used to get lectures from people in the Labor Party, which basically describing why the tax breaks shouldn’t have been introduced in 2001, and let’s say I agree with you, but so what? There’s a bunch of things in the tax system that with the benefit of hindsight, you wouldn’t have done that. But that doesn’t mean you should think repealing them is going to go without opposition or resentment.

Misha Zelinsky:

It’s been a very long conversation and thank you for your generosity, and I know you’ve been coughing and sneezing, so we hope that you’re right and you’ll-

Malcolm Turnbull:

I’ll survive, don’t worry.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now question I’ve got to ask you, this is the question I ask all guests. Is the clunky segue to the barbecue question of deeper mates, so three foreign guests at a barbecue at Malcolm’s. Who are they and why?

Malcolm Turnbull:

Three foreign guests, well I would have four foreign guests, and they would be my son, his wife and their two children.

Misha Zelinsky:

Oh man, you’re kidding. That’s a cheating answer.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Oh then they’re not really foreigners, they live in Singapore.

Misha Zelinsky:

That’s right.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Okay, three foreign friends. Well, let’s assume I’d also have their partners, so I would definitely have President Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi of Indonesia. Who’s he and his wife Ariane, are just great friends and wonderful people and that’s such an important relationship.

Misha Zelinsky:

Absolutely.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Who else? Well, I would say the interestingly, the two French leaders that I got to know well, Emmanuel Macron, and his prime minister at the time, no longer his Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, both really extraordinary people. I’ve not met Edouard Phelippe’s partner, but Bridgette, who is the wife of the President Emmanuel Macron is fabulous. Really great company, smart as you’d expect. I think France was very lucky to have them both together. I’m sorry that Eduard is no longer the PM there, but again I have to say that, I said I didn’t understand the internal machinations of the Labor Party. I have no idea or to understand the internal machinations of French politics, but they’d be some, I probably should nominate somebody from another country. Yeah, well I look a great person, a great human being and very good company and thoughtful as Shinzo Abe. Again, I’m sorry he’s no longer PM of Japan, and he retired for health reasons. But yeah, they would be among the people. But there’s some great characters, you can read about all of them in my book.

Misha Zelinsky:

Available in good bookshops everywhere.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Available at good bookshops everywhere.

Misha Zelinsky:

It’s right next to The Write Stuff.

Malcolm Turnbull:

That’s right, exactly. That’s right, often sold in a package deal.

Misha Zelinsky:

That’s a perfect place to leave this conversation, Malcolm Turnbull, thanks so much for joining us.

Malcolm Turnbull:

Okay, see you mate.

 

Alex Oliver

Alex Oliver is the Director of Research at the Lowy Institute where she oversees the annual Lowy Institute Poll.

Alex in an expert in foreign affairs and has authored several major studies on Australia’s diplomacy. She is a prolific author for international press including Foreign AffairsForeign PolicyThe Wall Street Journal and BBC.com, and for all major Australian publications.

Misha Zelinsky caught up with Alex for a chinwag about how the Australian public see the world, the politics of climate change, what’s driving attitudes on immigration, why Aussies are so worried about the CCP and just what the hell is going on with polling results.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Misha Zelinsky:             Alex Oliver, welcome to the show.

Alex Oliver:                   Thanks very much Misha.

Misha Zelinsky:             It’s great to have you along. There’s so many places we could start. One of the places I thought we could start was, the concept of how Australians see themselves vis-à-vis the world. Perhaps some people say, “Australians aren’t interested in the world”, what is your research and work tell you about Australian’s general attitude? Are they interested in the world? And how are they interested in the world?

Alex Oliver:                   It’s a very good question and for an organization that’s been taking public opinion polls on Australian’s relationship with the world for 15 years, you would think it would be easier to answer. But in some ways it depends on how you ask them that question. So if, as we did in 2016, we ask the question of whether Australia should play a more influential role in the world or whether Australia should mind its own business, and concentrate on our national problems, you’ll get a really divided population. Australians don’t know if they want to be forward-leaning in the world. They don’t know if we should just be insular and inward looking.

Alex Oliver:                   If you ask a question in the way that big American think tanks have asked the question, which is perhaps slightly less pointing, which is, “Should Australia take a more active part of world affairs or should it stay out of world affairs?” And you’ll get a much stronger response. So that suggests to me, and that response is sort of 80 to 15, with a few undecided, so that suggests to me that Australians don’t want to be too much of an active middle power, if you want to use that expression, that can be quite politically loaded, whether we’re a middle power, whether we’re an influential power or a significant power, there had been some disagreement about that. But we do want to be internationally engaged.

Alex Oliver:                   So that’s my long answer to your short question. We do see ourselves as having a role in the world, but we don’t want to be too forward-leaning as far as being too aggressive in the way that we prosecute our interests. And then there’s the other question, which is a geographic or geopolitical question, which is, where are we in the world? This is more a question of international identity, and this was a really interesting question we asked in 2010 and I’d really like to ask it again, except every year, in a 20 minute survey, it’s very hard to squash everything you want to ask into all one poll. So it’s a question that we need to revisit. But it was a really interesting set of responses in 2010.

Alex Oliver:                   When we asked Australians, “Do you think you are part of Asia, part of the Pacific, part of Europe or not really part of any region?” 30% said, “We are a part of Asia”, 30% said, “We are a part of Pacific”, and 30% said, “We’re not really a part of anywhere.” So that suggests our response, which is, we still are a little bit undecided of our place in the world. So not how view the world, but a really big question about our own identity. And Paul Keating of course said that Australia is, you know, this is the Asian … It wasn’t the Asian Century then, but we should be considering ourselves a part of Asia. And-

Misha Zelinsky:             You see, he was saying, “of Asia”, not “from Asia.”

Alex Oliver:                   Yeah, that’s right. And we had an Asian Century whitepaper and we had a whole, a political era of when we were thinking ourselves as part of Asia, and as far as I can tell, Australians are not really quite sure about that still.

Misha Zelinsky:             And so then, in that context, given there is a bit of confusion and perhaps space in the politics of the country for this, what do you make of Scott Morrison’s recent discussion about this sort of anti-globalist thing that we shouldn’t be accountable to unelected bureaucrats, presumably, a global institution like the United Nations or the WTO, they didn’t name them, what do you make of that? Firstly, what should we make of that generally? But is there a constituency for this in Australia more generally?

Alex Oliver:                   Another very good question. This was a speech that the prime minister made at the Lowy Institute just last week and I think we need to understand the context in which that speech was made, because that element of it was a little bit surprising, a little bit new and certainly quite different from the speech that he made to the Asia Society just a few months before up at Bloomberg, when it seemed to be a much more conventional and quite disciplined sort of approach to our various relationships in the world. This was a bit new and I guess, it could be read as being a bit reactionary, having come back from a very successful trip to the United States, well at least the first part of that trip was, with the State Dinner and only the second national leader to have been invited by President Trump for an official visit, and then going straight from Washington and that very positive affair, to the United Nations in a big climate change meeting, some criticism of Australia’s climate policies. Morrison not going along to that particular forum and having taken some criticism from that both internationally and domestically.

Alex Oliver:                   So it might have been a bit of a reaction to that, but I think that probably he’s a strand beneath that immediate context, which suggests something of the way the government is currently thinking about where we sit in the foreign policy firmament. On these issues, it is getting hard for Australia now, our stance on climate change and emissions, and on some of our immigration policies, but our asylum seeker policies, where we have been held up to criticism by some of those, I guess he calls or thinks of as sort of faceless international organizations. So I think there probably is something beneath just a reaction to a particular visit and him feeling a bit irritated by that and wanting to answer that.

Misha Zelinsky:             Well it was consistent with what Donald Trump said to the UN where he said that the future belongs to patriots not globalists.

Alex Oliver:                   Yes, but I wonder whether it’s that …? I would hope that that’s not where we’re headed, into that sort of populous, isolationist, inward-looking policies, because we’re not America, we’re much smaller than America and we’re a trading nation, we can get on to that later. Or we can actually get on to it now if you like.

Misha Zelinsky:             Well I was just curious about-

Alex Oliver:                   Australians understand that we have to be an international, an outward looking country, because we rely on free-trade, globalization has been good for us and we consistently get those sort of responses in our polling. We’d have close to 80% of Australians saying that globalization is a good thing. We have three quarters of the population saying that free trade is good for our national interest, it’s good for our economy, our standard of living, it’s even good for job creation, which is where there is sometimes some point of disagreement on whether if we have all these international relationships and allow all this freedom of movement and freedom of trade, that that will somehow impact our jobs for native Australians.

Alex Oliver:                   So we have been very outward looking and it’s been very consistently, if not actually growing. So if it is about a sort of an Australia-first, a move in an Australia-first direction, well then I don’t think that will resonate with Australians. If it is just about not being dictated to by … or being criticized by those multilateral organizations for specific, very difficult policy issues that where Australia’s interests differ from the interests of other nations, as the government sees them, and I think that’s probably where the government, where that Morrison speech was pitched.

Misha Zelinsky:             Now, in terms of you’ve talked about polling already and you’re obviously responsible for managing the Lowy Poll. I mean firstly maybe, for people that aren’t policy nerds like me, what is a Lowy Poll? How does it work? Maybe just give a little bit of background on that?

Alex Oliver:                   Yes, well firstly, I have to fess-up, and that is that now I’m a director of research at the Lowy Institute, and I’m not personally responsible for the poll anymore, I’ve handed that over to our very capable new pollster Natasha [Kasam 00:08:34], but obviously I supervise the whole research program, and I’ve had a long time dealing with the Lowy Institute Poll, so I take a particular interest in it.

Alex Oliver:                   Right, well, 15 years of polling. Our first poll was in 2005, the Institute was set up in 2004 and the then executive director and the team at the Lowy Institute thought that we really needed an opinion pool, which gauged Australian attitudes to the world, because those sort of questions were rarely asked of Australians. Not just to understand how they feel about these issues, but also to give them a voice on these issues and get these sort of issues into the public domain, get them talked about in the press. And then convey those to the political guys who make decisions on the basis of them rather than making decisions on some sort of instinct, which it may have been doing a decade and a half ago.

Alex Oliver:                   So the first Lowy Institute poll was pretty controversial. It was at a time in 2005 when we were headed towards the end of the Bush presidency. There was some very unpopular foreign policies then.

Misha Zelinsky:             The Iraq war.

Alex Oliver:                   Just to name one. The president himself was not particularly popular in Australia and for the Lowy Institute to come out with a poll, which probed that, a whole lot of things, but also that American relationship and, which found that Australians ranked American foreign policy at about the same level of disfavor as they ranked Islamic fundamentalism. It was quite shocking, I think, to politicians who, and even to the bureaucrats who may have known about these sort of undercurrents in Australian public opinion, but to have it boldly stated out there on the front page of a newspaper was confronting.

Alex Oliver:                   Since then we have taken public opinion polls every year. It’s one of our flagship products. It has evolved methodologically and I kind of think we probably need to get to that point, which is that every polling organization has faced some methodological challenges.

Misha Zelinsky:             Well let’s talk about that. You’re a pollster. It probably started with Brexit, into Hillary Clinton’s loss and then polling has been heavily discussed in Australia in light of some surprising result with the federal election in May this year. Is polling still something that we can put stock in? Or has it been somehow bastardized by the way people conceive of it? Because the maths underpinning it are not necessarily … The way pollsters conceive a polling is not the way the public interprets it … and others.

Alex Oliver:                   Well, I like to see the polling world in sort of two spheres. One is political polling, and as you say, the Brexit vote was surprising, because none of the polls really predicted it. It actually started before then. There was the 2012 election where most of the Republican pollsters predicted a Romney win.

Misha Zelinsky:             Yeah, that’s right.

Alex Oliver:                   There was a Scottish referendum where that was all completely unexpected. There was the 2015 UK election and that was a very notorious polling error.

Misha Zelinsky:             But Labor believed it was going to win.

Alex Oliver:                   Correct.

Misha Zelinsky:             Yeah, and Ed Miliband had prepared a victory speech-

Alex Oliver:                   And it was a Tory win by a wide margin. That in fact prompted a government ordered independent inquiry, the Sturgis Inquiry, which reported back in 2016, and raised some of the issues, which polling organizations the world over are encountering and, which we then encountered in our election in 2019. The sort of things that the Sturgis Inquiry reported on were … it’s overall finding was that the poll samples were unrepresentative, that it inadequately represented older demographics and over-represented younger demographics, because most of those polls were using internet-based polling methodologies.

Alex Oliver:                   Now, the Lowy Institute poll, and most of Australian political polling has been using phone polls. In the last few years, as everybody knows, almost nobody uses a fixed line phone anymore. The NBN has exaggerated the effect, because most people when switching over to the NBN don’t even bother with their fixed line phone anymore, they just use their mobiles. It’s really difficult to get people on their mobile phones, because they can screen calls and they don’t pick up, and also, they don’t want to sit with a mobile phone on their ear for 20 minutes, which is how long our surveys are.

Alex Oliver:                   So we’re all grappling with the same problems and the result of that has been that, depending on the polling organization, they’re either using a combination of phone and robo-polling or they’re using internet-based polling or they’re using a combination of internet and phone and SMS polling and so this is all in flux. When you put a cycle together and you’ve got a mixed set of methodologies like that, you need to weight each, because how do you know which bits are more important? Is each sample exactly equivalent?

Alex Oliver:                   So there’s a series of sets of post-weightings that you apply to the results to get the right answer and that can make a big difference. It can make several percentage points difference if you weight one part of the sample more than the other. What we’ve done in the last couple of years, is made, knowing that we have to make a transition to online polling, because otherwise you can’t get young people, because you can’t get them on the mobile phone either, we’ve made a graduated transition. So we’ve moved from a telephone-only poll including mobiles, to a part-online, part-phone model to, this year for the first time, a fully online model and we’ve been able to see if there have been any remarkable differences that will help us to decide how to apply the weightings to the results to get the most accurate result.

Alex Oliver:                   Now the other point, and the one that I said about the two spheres, is there are political polls and then there are issue polls like ours. A political poll, you can get sort of distorting factors like the so-called Shy Tory.

Misha Zelinsky:             The Shy Tory, yeah.

Alex Oliver:                   … which you’ve obviously heard of.

Misha Zelinsky:             Well, and maybe explain those?

Alex Oliver:                   There’s also the Lazy Labor. And the Shy Tory is the person who, when particularly on the phone, because it’s quite confronting talking to a human on the other end of the phone, and in this era of political correctness, are sort of unwilling to admit that they will vote for something like Brexit or a conservative party that doesn’t believe in climate change or whatever the factor is. So those things that they’re kind of a little bit shy about or embarrassed about saying on the phone. They’re probably actually much more prepared to do it online, because it’s a much less personal forum.

Alex Oliver:                   Then there what they call the Lazy Labor voters. Now this is a factor, and you could say the same in America about Democrats. This is a factor that refers to nothing about their work effort, but actually about turning out to vote. Now that is relevant in America and in the United Kingdom, because they don’t have compulsory voting on these things and they might a turnout of anywhere between 60% and 70%. We have compulsory voting, it’s much less of an issue. But it is a small issue and we do have turnout issues and we also do have informal voting issues. So there might be a small factor there.

Alex Oliver:                   Anyway, they’re the sort of issues that we’ve had to grapple with as an industry in the last 15 years, but it’s become particularly difficult in the last five years as we’ve made the move. Really, it was a wholesale move from doing our business on telephones to doing our business online.

Misha Zelinsky:             We still rant about politicians and union officials, so you guys are doing okay, but … I’m curious, I mean, diving into the Lowy Poll, you’ve said it’s been going since 2005, so 15 years, right? What are the big shifts in Australian attitudes over the time that you’ve noticed in running the poll?

Alex Oliver:                   I’m going to nominate, and I have thought about this, since you asked me the questions, three big shifts. But firstly, I wanted to just make a point, that 15 years is, in the way that we segregate our demographics in our polling, is about one generation. So the 18 year olds that we polled in 2005 are now 33. So they’ve really sort of grown-up.

Alex Oliver:                   That gives us an opportunity to look back over those 15 years and trace those attitudes. It’s not a strictly longitudinal poll, we don’t poll the same person. It’s not like the Seven Up program where we poll the same person every year. But we do poll the same demographic groups every year and we make sure it’s a representative sample in terms of education levels, gender, age obviously, income level … Have I missed anything? I think they’re the … Oh geographic location, urban, rural, metropolitan, the city centers versus regional centers.

Alex Oliver:                   Then whatever we don’t use that as a way of sort of measuring, in the pre-polling part, we then weight for it afterwards. Weight, W-E-I-G-H-T. We do a post-weighting process afterwards to make sure that the sample we’ve got is completely representative of the national population. So some of the shifts that we’ve noticed, and this is where the generational thing comes in, are on climate change, immigration, and I think we are just beginning to see in the last couple of years, some emerging shifts on attitudes towards China. Now I’ll start with climate.

Misha Zelinsky:             Yeah, that will be great.

Alex Oliver:                   There is a real gap between younger generations and older generations on climate, but more importantly than that, I think, is this … Can I use the hockey stick imagery? We’ve got a hockey stick picture when you look at our pictures and I’d encourage people to go online and have a look at all these numbers in pictures, because it becomes so obvious how things have changed over a 15 year period.

Alex Oliver:                   In 2006 when we first asked the question we now still ask on climate change, 68% of Australians said that global warming was a serious and pressing problem and we should do something about it, even if it involves significant cost. From that very high result, which I think the Rudd campaign then used and talked about climate change as being the greatest moral challenge of our times, and as the drought waned in the late 2000s, so did concern about climate change on the question that we asked.

Alex Oliver:                   We’ve asked the same question every year in exactly the same way to technically the same group of people. That almost halved, the concern about climate change. That’s a huge movement in six years. Now we’ve seen it swing upwards again, to the point where 61%, not quite at the same extreme level as we were back then in 2006, but 61% of Australians say that global warming is a serious and pressing problem, and we need to do something about it, even if it involves a cost.

Alex Oliver:                   There are three questions that we ask. It’s a three part question, you can choose one of three responses. There’s a middle response that says, yes, it expresses some concern about climate change, but that the problem will be gradual, and we can do something, like taking gradual steps and then the bottom one is, “We shouldn’t do anything until we know it’s really a problem.”

Alex Oliver:                   So 61% of Australians saying that, is a significant response now, and that’s actually up 25 points since 2012. So in seven years, we’ve seen the tick back up on the hockey stick to a really strong level of concern. Now the generation thing, which is that, when we ask that question for the first few years, there was very little generational difference. It was sort of surprising. You would sort of expect that the younger generations would be more concerned about that sort of thing because it concerns the future, whereas the older Australians who are less obviously personally physically affected by it, would be not quite so concerned, or to bring their old understandings of industry and coal and science and mining and all of that sort of thing.

Alex Oliver:                   But in the last two or three years, we’ve noticed a really big demographic divide on this, where 81% of 18 to 29s take that strong response, a serious and pressing problem. But only 43%, so half the number, of people aged 60 and over say the same thing. So there is a divide. Overall, the overall average is 61% and that’s where the other two age groups kind of fit in to that. So overall, you would say this has become a really pressing problem, except perhaps for that 60-plus age group. So that’s the first big shift, and one we’re we’ve seen, well, not just a shift in attitudes, but a shift in the way that generations are responding.

Misha Zelinsky:             So just on climate, I mean I think, perhaps a lot of Labor people might tear their hair out in frustration to hear that there’s 61% of people support action on climate change, and yet it seems to bedevil the party politically at most elections, including the last election. Is that young person, old person divide also, is there a similar divide on a rural regional, urban divide? Or is that almost represented by the fact that young people often live in cities? I’m curious about it because, that 61% arguably, I mean we’d have to look at the numbers are probably not overlaid across the majority of federal seats.

Alex Oliver:                   The rural, urban thing isn’t as clear-cut as the generational divide. We’ve got a bit of a problem with an error margin because with the sample, we’ve got a pretty big sample, it was 2,000 people, but once you start dividing it down into rural and urban, unless there’s a very big difference in attitudes, we can’t say that that is statistically significant. And that’s the issue with that one. So it’s the generational divide that is more important than the urban, rural split, from our interpretation of the results.

Alex Oliver:                   The other thing to note about climate change is that it’s, now we ask a question almost every year as well about what are the threats to Australia’s vita interests? And these threats are not confined to foreign policy threats. So we do ask about climate change, we ask about cyber-attacks, we ask about terrorism. This year we asked about North Korea’s nuclear program. We ask about the Australian economy. In the past we’ve asked about water issues. But this year for the first time, climate change was the number one threat. Equally ranked with cyber-attacks and just above terrorism, whereas in previous years, terrorism has been the foreign policy threat that most Australians are concerned about.

Alex Oliver:                   Then we’ve asked a different question, and we’ve only asked this once, which is to your point, which is, “How do you situate all of these threats in terms of Australia’s policy priorities?” What make them decide to vote for a particular party and for a particular policy-

Misha Zelinsky:             That’s right, because you can have all these issues at once, and they kind of compete with one another. You can be concerned about climate change, but worried about your job, and then, how do you vote?

Alex Oliver:                   It seems to me, and based on this question, which we asked in 2016, which we might revisit and we asked it in a different way in about 2007, with not much different results. Education, health and the economy, not in any particular order, but those three issues are the things which Australians rank as the most important issues facing Australia.

Alex Oliver:                   Once you get down to things like immigration, climate change, terrorism, more important than both of those, but less important than education, health, and the economy. There you start to see what actually might drive votes. Foreign policy in Australia, it’s possibly different in America, where foreign policy is a big issue and the Iraq war was obviously a huge issue there and America’s sort of global interventions generally, but in Australia, foreign policy is less motivating in terms of getting people to decide where they put their tick on the ballot box.

Alex Oliver:                   Except, and there have been a couple of exceptions, and one was the Whitlam election and the other I think probably was arguably the Rudd election, although it’s hard to know there whether that was a time, it was time to move on from a very long Liberal government to a different government. It’s hard to say and I have been grappling with this question about, you know, do these issues like climate change, which repeatedly come back to us in our polling as being a really quite serious concern and in this years poll, the most serious concern, far more so than the prospect of a downturn in the Australian economy. When do those issues actually start to drive votes, and obviously not in 2019.

Misha Zelinsky:             I mean you touch on the fact that in 2005 climate change was very concerning, then it dipped down, the drought broke, it rained significantly and then now we are in another period of drought. The polling would at least, on an anecdotal basis or a correlation basis, seems to be-

Alex Oliver:                   It correlates with the weather.

Misha Zelinsky:             … moving together. Yeah. It’s interesting that people seem to need a measurable or visible demonstration of what can be an abstract concept of carbon emissions. You can’t sort of see or touch it, but you can certainly see the consequences through drought.

Alex Oliver:                   I think that’s probably the most important factor driving concern about climate change, is the very physical, confronting presence of a drought, and I think that’s one of the main reasons why we’ve seen rising concern about climate change since 2012 to the point where it is now and if the drought continues, I expect it will keep going up.

Alex Oliver:                   The other factor I think is the policy environment and if, you know between 2007 and 2014, when attitudes about climate were much less concerned, there was sort of a sense that there was some policy movement happening. There was all sorts of prospects of a carbon tax, a carbon pollution reduction scheme. The carbon tax was eventually introduced, it was then dismantled, but in those years when concern about climate change was falling, there was a lot of policy activity.

Alex Oliver:                   In the years after the election of the Abbott government 2013 to now, I think there’s been a sense of either policy vacuum or a policy paralysis or a policy indecision, probably until the last couple of years when we’ve talked a lot more about a climate policy with the Finkel Review and now, we have an energy policy now, not so much as a climate policy. So I think the policy settings, the policy environment has something to do with it as well, but I think, you’re right, the driving force is the climate, funny enough.

Misha Zelinsky:             Now, so the next big one you mentioned was immigration. Maybe you can take us through how the attitudes are shifting there, because I’m sure it’s not just an Australian phenomenon, we’re seeing this all around the world.

Alex Oliver:                   Well yeah, so this one’s hard to read here. I mean it’s easier to say that we’re suffering the same sort of anti-immigration backlash as is being reflected in the populous politics of other western nations, the United Kingdom, the United States and across Europe. What we saw last year was a big spike in anti-immigration sentiment in that, we went from 40% in 2017 who said in response to a question, “Do you think that the immigration rates to Australia are too high, about right or too low?” 40% said that they were too high in 2017, and that shot up to 54% in 2018. Now a 14 point rise in one year is something we consider quite dramatic.

Alex Oliver:                   We then of course asked the same question in 2019 and we found that that response had moderated. It had then dropped seven points in one year. Now, we changed methodology in the middle there, where we shifted from a 50/50 panel online and telephone to a completely online panel. That may have had something to do with it, but I suspect not all to do with it, because we had had that spike and then a moderation, in that second result there, where 47% of Australians say that our levels of immigration are too high, is still significantly higher than the 40%, so seven points higher than the same people we said that in 2017 and 10 points higher than when we asked the question in 2014.

Alex Oliver:                   So there does seem to be some underlying rise in sentiment against high levels of immigration, but not as dramatic as we might have thought last year. Now, the sort of things that we were talking about last year when we polled that in 2018, where we’re talking about house prices, we were talking about Chinese investment in residential real-estate, a question we’d asked the year before and we’ve got very strong responses on that. We’re talking about congestion and crowded cities and urban overcrowding and all those sort of things. There was a lot of conversation about it, and it seemed that the respondents might have been responding to that sort of debate that was happening in front of them.

Alex Oliver:                   That debate seems to have eased as house prices, as we all know, came off the boil. But there is still a conversation, very much a conversation about congestion and lack of infrastructure and urban crowding and that sort of thing, so I think that is what is driving this concern about immigration, is that Australia can’t sustain those high levels of immigration, unless we have some really positive, strong policy responses that address overcrowding in our cities.

Misha Zelinsky:             It’s interesting isn’t it that what’s essentially an urban planning question, capacity around roads, rail et cetera, has a sort of a dimension that’s related to foreign policy or immigration, but I mean, do you have a sense of how much of it relates to …? You know, because often people say, well it’s an economic scarcity argument or it’s a cultural backlash or it’s a racism question. I mean, Australia has a rather vexed sort of background relating to immigration, particularly with the White Australia policy. It’s very difficult to get to the bottom of what is truly driving that question. I mean, you seem to be saying congestion, but could it be those other things as well?

Alex Oliver:                   Well, we have asked the question. We’ve asked it a couple of times, about a range of aspects of the immigration question to try and find out what might be driving attitudes towards the rate of immigration, but overall, we get overwhelmingly positive responses on the idea of immigration. That it makes the country stronger, that it’s good for the economy, we get very low responses on things like, “Immigrants are a burden on social welfare systems”, or “They take away jobs from other Australians.” That they respond to the idea of sort of a cultural mix making Australia a stronger place. So as far as we can tell from our polling consistently over the last few years, is that generally attitudes towards immigration are very positive. That the problem is not immigration per se, the problem is the rate of immigration and that’s why I came back to overcrowding and lack of infrastructure.

Misha Zelinsky:             That’s interesting, because one of the other things that people that talk about these issues, discuss them, is that there seems to be a correlation between, and certainly a thing at 2010 and 2013 elections, around the question of refugees and control of migration. Now Australia has relatively settled that political debate, but you’re seeing this backlash of nativism in Europe. It seems to have correlated with a sharp up tick in refugees out of the Syrian crisis. Is there a link between those things? Between control of migration, refugees and immigration at all? Or-

Alex Oliver:                   Well, I don’t know-

Misha Zelinsky:             … is it hard to know?

Alex Oliver:                   Yeah.

Misha Zelinsky:             I appreciate that you’re correlations, not causation et cetera-

Alex Oliver:                   Correct.

Misha Zelinsky:             … but I’m just curious.

Alex Oliver:                   I mean John Howard always used to say that unless you have control over your borders, you won’t have any confidence in your immigration program. From what I can see, that’s probably right, in the sort of results that we get from the questions we ask about immigration. I mean, obviously the refugee flows in Europe are nothing like the refugee flows we get to Australia, so we’re talking about magnitudes, orders of difference. But I think he was right to say that if we don’t have that, in the coalition sense, that control over the borders, then that does undermine confidence in a strong immigration program. His expression of a view, which I think probably resonates with the Australia public based on those sort of results.

Misha Zelinsky:             And John Howard, not to speak for John Howard, or advocate for him, but he of course, said that by being tough, some would say too tough on refugees, that Australia was able to sustain a large intake of permanent migrants and skilled migrants. So it’s an interesting nexus there. That-

Alex Oliver:                   We’ve asked a number of questions about offshore processing and about the treatment of asylum seekers. We noticed a softening of attitudes. We got very, very strong responses to Operation Sovereign Borders around the time of the Abbott government’s election, sort of just after say in our 2014 polls.

Misha Zelinsky:             That “Stop the boats” rhetoric?

Alex Oliver:                   Yeah. “Turn back the boats when safe to do so”, the idea of protecting Australia’s sovereignty, that was a strongly favorable policy. 70% of Australians agreed with that. Where there is much more division is on the idea of offshore processing about never allowing asylum seekers to come onshore regardless of their refugee status. Those policies were much more polarizing. Temporary protection visas, going back through the years, we’ve asked a dozen questions at least on this and there was much more division about that.

Alex Oliver:                   What there was a strong response was on the idea of turning back boats and I’m pretty sure we used the expression Operation Sovereign Borders and I think that was a clever piece of policy naming because it really seemed to resonate with the people we asked that question to.

Misha Zelinsky:             You might accuse the Liberal party of polling their policies but … So just turning to the third big trend you talked about, which is the relationship with China and I thought that this really stood in the last poll, in the 2019 poll. Was the way the Australian public perceives the relationship with the Chinese government and how China it acting in the region. I was curious about, do you think that Australians are somewhat ahead of the political class in this? Because it was interesting that big shift that we saw in those numbers, maybe you can explain that?

Alex Oliver:                   Yeah, this was a really interesting year to be asking questions about China. We’ve asked questions about China since 2005, but this year we really noticed a shift. So in the past I wouldn’t have characterized Australian’s relationship with China, not the government’s relationship with China, but the Australian people’s relationship, as a little bit bipolar. So on one side of that center line, the strongly positive responses, really strongly positive responses on the Chinese people, its history and culture and China’s economic performance.

Alex Oliver:                   On the other side, and very strongly negative responses, so you’re really seeing that sort of polarization of attitudes, were on things like China’s political system, its record on climate policy, and I think that relates to actually just its sheer size and the fact that it’s a big emitter, even if it’s not per capita. The strongest negative response is on China’s human rights record. In the mix there also, is a little bit of anti-Chinese foreign investment in Australia.

Alex Oliver:                   What we’ve noticed this year is that there are some real subtleties starting to emerge. We asked a couple of years ago for the first time, about foreign interference and this was about the time when the first political scandal emerged about Chinese attempts to influence, operators, businessmen attempts to influence through political donations and through their own networking, the attitudes and stances of Australian politicians. It was front page news and there were ABC documentaries about it and it was a very prominent debate, and yet when we asked that question, we found that in the hierarchy of things that Australians were concerned about as a threat to our vital interests, it came very low down in the list. And in fact when we asked the question first, we asked about foreign influence from China and we also asked about foreign influence from the United States.

Alex Oliver:                   Now in the context, where nobody was talking about America’s foreign influence in Australia at the time, and they were obviously talking about influence from Chinese businessmen and the Chinese government, that was a pretty weird response, that the reaction was about the same. It was, “I don’t like the idea about foreign interference, but I’m not really sure where it’s coming from.” Two years later, we find that around 50% of Australians think that foreign interference in Australian politics is a threat to our vital interests, but overlaid on that, a whole lot of other really equivocal if not very negative responses on things like foreign technology, which was obviously a question geared to the Huawei issue and the way that the government has responded to that.

Alex Oliver:                   When we asked about whether in considering such an issue of bringing sophisticated technology to Australia, “Should you be most concerned about protecting Australians from foreign state intrusion, or bringing the most sophisticated technology to Australia, or whether cost to the consumer is the most important priority?” The highest response there, with nearly half of Australians saying that the most important thing is to protecting Australians from foreign state intrusion. So it’s not about costs, and it’s not about technology, it’s really about the idea that there is some sort of threat to our sovereignty and our freedoms if we are to allow a foreign company like that to come in and potentially undermine our security.

Alex Oliver:                   We also see some strong concerns about the Pacific and China’s increasing presence and influence in the Pacific, where 73% said that Australia should try to prevent China from increasing its influence in the Pacific. That China’s infrastructure projects, so that’s the Belt and Road initiative, where China is building these big infrastructure projects across Asia and more broadly, and nearly 8 in 10 Australians said that those infrastructure projects are part of its plan for regional domination.

Alex Oliver:                   Then I think the final one was, a question about Australia’s economic relationship with China and this was very striking, because in the past, there have been some clear results that suggest that Australians see China as having been very positive economically for us, that it has been the reason why Australia has avoided a recession through the Global Financial Crisis and that the Chinese economic story was a positive one, whenever we’ve asked about it.

Alex Oliver:                   But, this year we asked about Australia’s economic dependence on China and we’re finding 8 in 10 Australians who say that we’re too economically dependent on China. The economic story has shifted from being a positive story, and a very positive story to being quite a negative factor in the relationship. Then of course, finally, human rights. There’s been a lot of discussion about the Uyghurs internment camps, reeducation, and then-

Misha Zelinsky:             And the Hong Kong situation?

Alex Oliver:                   … now, the Hong Kong situation, but that’s actually emerged post our policies.

Misha Zelinsky:             Well that’s interesting. Could we even [crosstalk 00:42:30].

Alex Oliver:                   But I suspect if we asked the same question about Australia doing more to protect human rights in China, we will get an even stronger response on that post-Hong Kong.

Misha Zelinsky:             I think what was interesting, and you’ve sort of taken us through a great tour of the numbers, but the one that stood out to me was that nearly the same amount of people that said that Chinese investment in the BRI was a part of regional domination, nearly the same number said that Australia should do more to resist China’s military activities in our region, even if this affects our economic relationships. That’s quite interesting that security, and the sense of the Chinese Communist Party’s intentions in the region are being viewed with a lot of suspicion. I think a lot of people maybe underestimate how sophisticated the Australian public are in viewing the behaviors of the Chinese Communist Party and the Xi regime. Would that be a fair thing to say do you think?

Alex Oliver:                   Yes, and I often say that when people talk to me about polls, and they’d say, “Well, do Australians really care about this stuff? This is all very complicated.” One year we asked them about freedom of navigation operations, and we got a 75% response saying, “Yes, we should be conducting freedom of navigation operations.” So I say, underestimate the Australian voter at your peril, because while they may not devote a huge amount of time thinking about it, when they do think about it, and they’re asked questions about it, they respond with some sophistication.

Alex Oliver:                   You’ve raised a point that was a result that I didn’t mention, but it’s exactly in the same lines as the ones that are concerned about Belt and Road, who are concerned increasing China’s influence in the Pacific and who are concerned about Australia’s economic independence, is yes, that its military presence in the region is of concern and that we should be doing something to stop that, even if that’s going to involve some economic hit to Australia and that’s of course new.

Alex Oliver:                   The concern of the business community and industry in Australia and any exporter, is that if Australia sticks its head above the parapet, and responds to China’s moves in any sort of … In a way that China would read as aggressive or interfering, is what is going to be the blow back?

Misha Zelinsky:             Well that’s right, yeah.

Alex Oliver:                   The retribution on Australian business. So will there be more coal held up in Chinese ports? More wines stuck on Chinese ports, unable to get to its markets.

Misha Zelinsky:             And fewer students being sent here-

Alex Oliver:                   Fewer students being sent here. I think that’s our third-largest export, foreign students, so we’re at a point where there are some very serious tensions between what we do in a policy sense towards China and how that impacts on our economic relationship. Two years ago I would have said Australians would have said, at almost all costs, the economic relationship must be preserved. 8 in 10 Australians say it’s possible to have a good relationship with China and a good relationship with the United States at the same time. Any sort of question like that, they’ve always leaned very strongly. They would have said, a year ago in fact, when we asked a question about whether it’s the economic relationship, or the military threat from China was the biggest factor, most people would say, 75% of Australians would say, China is more of an economic partner than a military threat.

Alex Oliver:                   I think that’s changed, and I think that will be interesting for the government to weigh into its policy settings, when it starts considering this balance of having the cake and eating it too, and just how much will we allow China to make those incursions on our sovereignty and constrain our freedom of expression and choice in relation to these issues.

Misha Zelinsky:             It’s interesting the way that Australians seem to have responded to the concept of a foreign power interfering in our way of life here, and I think that that seems to have manifested in the numbers. One of the things I’d be curious about, you’ve talked about the Chinese relationship. I suppose the other side of the coin is the US relationship. At the beginning there, we talked about the negative views of the US president at the time, and US foreign policy, the Bush administration, 2005. How much has the Trump administration undermined the perception and prestige of the United States in the Australian mindset? It’s something that I think is a challenge for the United States in that context.

Alex Oliver:                   It is, and they’re obviously very concerned about the numbers coming out of Australia, including our own public opinion work, which shows that the American president is actually less trusted than the Chinese president. With only 25% of Australians saying that they have confidence in Donald Trump to do the right thing regarding world affairs, whereas 30% will say that about Xi Jinping, which is interesting, but when you look at the picture overall, Australians seem to be able to separate out their views about an individual who is sitting in the oval office from the relationship as a whole.

Alex Oliver:                   When you look at the relationship as a whole, well we can look back 100 years, but I’ll confine that to the 15 years we’ve been taking public opinion polls, overall, never fewer than 90% of Australians have said that the alliance is important for Australia’s security. Overall, attitudes towards America on our feelings thermometer, where we measure feelings on a scale of 0 to 100, so 100 is warm and 0 is freezing, never have feelings towards the United States fallen below 60 degrees.

Alex Oliver:                   This year the gap between the United States and China are on that thermometer, which is a basic question, but really quite revealing, the gap there is around 15 points, so the warmth towards the United States, despite the fact that we have two very unpopular presidents, or one very unpopular president and one president that Australians might be slightly scared of in Xi Jinping, the relationship between the United States and Australia operates on many different levels and not just about the interpersonal relationship between our prime minister and their president or the character of their president.

Alex Oliver:                   So it has weathered those changes in presidents, yes President Obama was very popular here and yes, the relationship with America generally warmed during those Obama years, and it was warmer than it was during the waning years of the Bush presidency. The Iraq war was an unpopular policy. Here in Australia, we wearied of our engagements in the Middle East and the American relationship and our feelings towards it took a hit, but never severely and never to the point where we felt less of it than we did of China, our other major partner. So I guess we are at a bit of a delicate balancing point in the relationship in that at some point where our relationship has been grounded in similar values, and we know that Australians have responded to that sort of question when we ask about what underpins attitudes towards the United States.

Alex Oliver:                   It’s not just the idea that they’re our security guarantor, or that they’re going to come to the defense of Australia, but that we have similar histories, we’ve been involved in wars together, that we have similar values and political systems, we are like-minded in many more ways obviously than we are with the Chinese. The question I guess is, if Australians start to perceive the values of America as diverging too far from ours, will we start seeing that relationship falter? At the moment, I don’t see any evidence of it. At the moment, I think there’s an unpopular president, well he’s unpopular here anyway, and that-

Misha Zelinsky:             His popularity hasn’t gone above 50% of the US either, but, on approval, but …

Alex Oliver:                   Yeah, Republicans love him though, 90% of them say he’s doing a good job.

Misha Zelinsky:             Indeed.

Alex Oliver:                   But at the moment, the relationship is solid. There a bit of a difference in generational attitudes towards the United States, so younger people are less favorable towards it and older people are much more favorable towards it, but the young are not negative towards it, so that’s an important point. The other important point is that it’s quite a non-partisan relationship as well, in that if you look at the responses from people who identify as Greens, who identify as Labor, who identify as One Nation, Liberal, National, across all of that political spectrum, the results are still positive towards the United States. So it’s not a particularly partisan relationship.

Alex Oliver:                   We see that, and in that we see both Labor and Liberal spokespersons on foreign policy talking about the US alliance as the bedrock of our foreign policy, so around the bedrock of, the foundation of Australia’s security.

Misha Zelinsky:             One thing I saw in the poll and I’m curious to get your take on this. It was the perceptions of how much of Australia’s budget is made up by foreign aid spending and what does that tell us about the way Australians perceive foreign aid? Is it possible that it might shift over time as we see these threats emerging in things like the Pacific or in our neighborhood? Australians have identified, I think 55% have said they’re very afraid of a Chinese base being built in the Pacific, in our region and it was reported that they had contemplated doing that via the BRI in Vanuatu. So the perceptions of foreign aid and cutting things like the Australia network, how can those attitudes … Do you think they’ll shift over time? How can policy makers convince Australians of the need to be more invested in our region? A big question.

Alex Oliver:                   Well there’s a couple of questions. You’ve got a couple of points here to your question, which is a tricky one and that is, if you ask Australians about the proportion of budgets that is spent on foreign aid, they will grossly overestimate it. But that’s unsurprising because nobody knows how the budget is cut up. The government is not particularly transparent about the way that it cuts it up. There’s a pie chart every year in the budget papers, well who looks at that?

Misha Zelinsky:             Joe Hockey looks at it I think, but that’s it.

Alex Oliver:                   Apart from the bureaucrats, and obviously the expenditure review committee or whatever goes into making up a budget every year, what a nightmare. I’m not surprised that Australians get that wrong. They do think we’re more generous though than they think we should be, so on average in 2018, the average response when you ask them what they think is spent on foreign aid, they’ll say 14% of the budget. When you ask them what they think should be spent on foreign aid, they say 10% of the budget. So they actually think that we’re being a bit more generous than we should be, even though the numbers are completely wrong. The actual amount that Australia spends on aid is less than 1% of the budget, so they’re wrong by a factor if 10 at least.

Alex Oliver:                   The other question is, do they actually characterize support for the Pacific as foreign aid? I think it’s the way that you talk about it. If you just say foreign aid, they’ll say, “We’re giving money to starving people in Africa”, or whatever it is, drought relief in some other country. Once you make it very specific and you say, “We want to help the people in our region to do better in life, to give them better development outcomes, to support them to become stronger countries”, then I think you get a much more positive response.

Alex Oliver:                   Whenever we’ve asked, and this is before the Pacific step up of the current government, whenever we’ve asked about Australia’s responsibility towards the Pacific, we always get a very strong response, as in 8 out of 10 Australians say that we have a moral obligation towards the Pacific. If you talk about specific obligations with aid and whether we should be spending money to help our nearest neighbors, you’ll get a very positive response. I think the step up has obviously made a difference and I think the idea of a potential Chinese encroachment into, and I say, a port in Vanuatu or in PNG or some other Pacific nation, then it starts to get more pressing, but I think Australians generally feel generous towards the Pacific, even if they don’t feel generous more generally with respect to aid.

Misha Zelinsky:             So it’s the context right? I mean, take for example-

Alex Oliver:                   I think it is the context and I think that governments focus on the Pacific and on our near region in terms of spending our development dollars-

Misha Zelinsky:             Because that feels tangential and you know?

Alex Oliver:                   … is something that will be much more present, pressing, relevant for the Australian public, than spending it … dispersing it more broadly across the globe.

Misha Zelinsky:             So we just sort of for the tape, we just knocked over a bottle of water, but everything’s fine, everything’s fine. So on that, I know you’ve spoken about this in the past, but how important is something like the Australia network in the role that you play in that soft power part? The American government for example is very concerned with the soft power it projects. The Chinese government is very concerned about the soft power and it’s united front work, the way it projects itself. I mean are we doing enough to forward project our soft, benefits of Australian way of life and values in our region?

Alex Oliver:                   Well, no. We don’t have a huge amount of public opinion data on this. I did ask the question, I think it was back in 2011 before I was running the poll, and my colleague Fergus Hansen was drafting the questions and I said, “Can you please ask a question about public diplomacy and international broadcasting?” And the response was very positive. It’s hard to disagree that we should be projecting a positive presence of Australia abroad, but again, it comes down to budgets and priorities and this government has not prioritized Australia’s international broadcasting. That’s a completely different and very complicated story.

Alex Oliver:                   We’ll be releasing a paper on it actually later this year. We did a big study on it in 2010 and we’re now updating that, looking at how the countries as you mentioned, who really do prioritize their public diplomacy and their international broadcasting as a way of communicating their soft power to other countries around the world in the idea that that will warm them to us and it will make it easier for us to get the thing done that we need to and to build international constituencies for policies that are favorable towards us.

Alex Oliver:                   I mean I think it’s a non-brainer, it’s not that expensive, it’s an incredibly cost-effective way to reach large audiences, and the fact that we have not even been able to do that in the Pacific, and that we’ve cut the budgets. Having cut the Australia network, which was a program that was funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs, that was cut by the Abbott government and now the ABC’s international division has been disbanded and its budgets for international broadcasting cut even further to the point where we don’t even broadcast shortwave into the Pacific anymore for vast parts of the Pacific, which can’t receive any other forms of communication, that certainly don’t have effective broadband connections, is kind of a travesty to me. But that’s my personal view.

Alex Oliver:                   I think that we should be doing much more to project Australia’s values, way of life, political system, democratic ideals around the region. If this is what everybody else is doing, it’s what China is doing, it’s what America is doing, and we need to be part of that story, particularly in our region, obviously particularly in the Pacific. So I have torn my hair out, I actually do still have some hair, but … over the last decade about this. This really difficult policy issue, but really, it shouldn’t be that hard.

Misha Zelinsky:             Yeah, because if we don’t do it, someone else will, right? There’ll be a vacuum that will be filled by another country no doubt.

Alex Oliver:                   Well that’s what the issue has been with the dropping of our shortwave frequencies. We had shortwave frequencies where we broadcast in many languages actually, eight languages, into the Pacific as soon as just about five or six years ago, and now we broadcast in two languages, Tok Pisin and Australian and we don’t broadcast in shortwave anymore. The risk always was that all of the countries, and some other countries, not just us, are dropping their shortwave frequencies and opting for cheaper FM and long-line “broadcasting”, that China would pick up those frequencies, and China has been picking up those frequencies. There’s actually no evidence that they’ve picked up our frequency to broadcast into the Pacific. We haven’t seen any evidence of that. They’ve certainly picked up the frequency, what they’re using it and where they’re broadcasting it to is another question. But yes, of course, that is the risk.

Misha Zelinsky:             Now, the next question I want to ask you about, and I know you’ve spoken about this publicly, but the question of gender balance in foreign affairs, it’s a, dare I say it, a very blokey world? It still remains that, of course, we had our most recent first ever female foreign minister Julie Bishop and now we have another one, Marise Payne, but that’s the first two ever in very near time. Now how do we get more gender balance in foreign affairs, but also, how do we encourage young women, young girls, to get more interested in it at an early age, and build that pipeline?

Alex Oliver:                   Very good question. We released a paper on this, which was a three year study that dredged up all this data, which is not particularly easy to find, from intelligence agencies, defense agencies, foreign affairs. We did some comparisons with other countries, and we found out that overall, Australia is neither particularly better nor particularly worse than any of its international counterparts. If you look at America and the United Kingdom, Canada, we might be marginally worse than a couple of them, it’s not dramatic.

Alex Oliver:                   But yes, the overall picture is that this is a sector of Australian society that is blokey, it’s male. About two thirds for example, of appointments to ambassadors positions, our ambassadors abroad, are male and Australia has never appointed a female ambassador or high commissioner who’s the equivalent in the Commonwealth countries to the United States, United Kingdom, Indonesia, Japan and Thailand. The exception was China.

Alex Oliver:                   Part of this problem is political appointments. We also have a very blokey politics and so when you’re looking at appointing a plum political position to one of your political mates, then it’s more likely to be a male than a female, because there’s just simply more. So it’s sort of a vicious cycle.

Misha Zelinsky:             Yeah, one begets the other, sort of thing, yeah okay.

Alex Oliver:                   So that has a real impact. The male political appointments has real impact on the gender balance of our ambassadorial makeup and Department of Foreign Affairs, with its professional appointments, so professional diplomats, has been doing its level best to get a better gender balance, but it’s kind of hobbled by these political appointments. But there are other parts of the sector, which still need a lot of work. The intelligence sector is dramatically male. Security clearances could be part of that. We did look in detail at security clearances. If you’re going to work for an intelligence agency or the Defense Department in a classified kind of role where security clearances are necessary, there was a clear correlation between the higher security clearance and the number of, and the proportion of males and females. It may be that women are kind of put off by the whole security clearance process, which can be quite invasive. Once you actually got into the process, we didn’t find any gender imbalance in whether you were awarded, whether a male or a female was awarded a clearance once they were in the process. But that might be a deterrent factor.

Alex Oliver:                   I think more broadly the sort of things that you see across all sectors of society in the male female imbalance, if you’re looking at accountants or lawyers or other professionals where males dominate, you find the females dominate at the graduate level, you’ll get more women law graduates for example, coming in to work, that you will male graduates, but by the time you get up to the senior levels, you’ve lost half of the women, then you’ve only got a third of the leadership group being women. Some of that you can sheet home to families and family responsibilities, but some of it you can also sheet home to, it’s much more difficult for women to work and mange childcare and manage home responsibilities. They are the sort of things that are not unique to this sector, but really need to be looked at.

Alex Oliver:                   Networks, men are good at networking, it comes naturally. I’m making gross generalizations, but we did a survey on this, we got about 600 or 700 responses, and that was a consistent theme was that, male networks are effective, women are not as good at leveraging those. That suggests that there’s an opportunity for better mentoring programs, for coaching through the promotion processes. How do you apply for a promotion? How do you perform in an interview or a promotion round? Looking at the way that you measure merit.

Alex Oliver:                   Now merit is one of those things that some are constantly harping on about, while we always … We rely on merit as if that is some sort of gold standard. Without acknowledging that built-in to the concept of merit, is a whole lot of and potentially biased measurements of what actually good performance is. Is good performance presenteeism, is good performance going out for a lot of networking lunches or bringing in potentially lots of new clients when, in fact, it might have been a lot of the background work that made that happen. It might have been a lot of the work at home, if you were able to work flexibly, that you weren’t able to be physically present.

Alex Oliver:                   The idea of merit can be quite a loaded concept, and we should be aware of that when we say that we promote on the basis of merit. The other thing is, and particularly for this sector, is overseas placements. So it’s very important if you’re working in this sector, to get an overseas posting. So if you’re a diplomat or a defense expert, or somebody who, like me, works in foreign policy in a think tank or in an academic institution, then it’s really important for your career that you go abroad.

Alex Oliver:                   There are all sorts of misperceptions about whether women, like me, with children, would actually want to go abroad and sometimes they’re just simply overlooked and discounted for those sort of placements. Or they are told that, you wouldn’t want to do that, or you couldn’t do that or it’s a six month placement or it’s a three year placement or whatever. We get quite a lot of feedback about those sort of misperceptions of females motivations, in terms of overseas placements. They were just a few of the things that we were looking at in ways to address this very obvious imbalance.

Alex Oliver:                   Then finally, transparency. A lot of this data was very hard to find. One of the reasons why we spent so long on it, was we got really stuck on digging out some of the data. It’s there, but it’s hard to find and sometimes, particularly across the intelligence sector, it’s quite secret and you have to ask for it. Now if the data is public, then the issue is in the spotlight and there’s a continual pressure to maintain and to keep working on, you know, continuing to work on your gender balance. If the data is secret, well there’s no pressure at all. So I think one of the most simple steps is actually to make this data public.

Misha Zelinsky:             Well, that’s a lot of good lessons there. Now, just to round things off, we’ll pivot to, seamlessly as I always do, to the final question I ask all my audience members. I’m quite eager to hear your answer to this. So a barbecue at Alex’s place, three foreign guests, alive or dead, who would they be and why?

Alex Oliver:                   Oh, well you didn’t say alive or dead. Well, that’s a whole different question.

Misha Zelinsky:             Oh well, alive, then it might be more interesting!

Alex Oliver:                   Let’s just focus on the live ones. Well, because you know, I like having friends at a barbecue.

Misha Zelinsky:             Yeah, you do.

Alex Oliver:                   And I would never have described myself as a good networker, so my first person would be Mana Rawlings, who was the UK high commissioner here for a few years, she left last year. She’s a great girl. She became a friend while she was here. She was a fantastic ambassador for the United Kingdom or high commissioner, as they’re called. She’s now what we would call a deputy secretary level. They called her director general at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, so very senior in the role. She’s got responsibility for Asia Pacific, The Americas, whole parts of Asia and global Britain and of course that’s a very-

Misha Zelinsky:             A tough portfolio.

Alex Oliver:                   … that’s a very tough portfolio in the context of Brexit, but I admired her enormously, apart from the fact that she was very good fun. She was such a valiant promoter and defender of Britain, even in the face of a very contorted and convoluted and complicated and at times, shocking Brexit process, which she was here as high commissioner. That, she would be a great person to have around, particularly around about the time of the Brexit vote, to get her interpretation of it all.

Misha Zelinsky:             Absolutely.

Alex Oliver:                   I’m going through a bit of a spy frenzy at the moment. I seem to be reading a lot of spy novels and watching a lot of spy TV, The Bureau, was the last one, the French one, and I’m currently reading a book called, The Spy and the Traitor, by Ben Macintyre.

Misha Zelinsky:             A great book.

Alex Oliver:                   You read it?

Misha Zelinsky:             Yes.

Alex Oliver:                   I’m about a third of the way through it. It’s absolutely fascinating. Oleg Gordievsky I assume that’s how you pronounce it, was a Russian-

Misha Zelinsky:             Defector.

Alex Oliver:                   … KGB colonel who defected to the United Kingdom, but he was a double-agent for Mi6 on behalf of the British for a whole decade. He’s now 81, and I would kill to sit down and have a conversation with him. He sounds like an absolute character.

Misha Zelinsky:             A fascinating story, yeah.

Alex Oliver:                   I don’t know, that’s a tough one with the rest. I met only once, briefly, but would love to get together with her again, Kelly Magsamen, who’s the vice president of national security and international policy at The Center for American Progress, which is sort of a fellow think tank in America. She’s a real dynamo, she doesn’t mince words, and I would love to have a chance to sit down and have a drink and a good chat with her. Pete Buttigieg.

Misha Zelinsky:             Yeah Pete.

Alex Oliver:                   I’m intrigued at how a mayor of a small town in Indiana South Bend, runs for president. The youngest-

Misha Zelinsky:             A 37 no less-

Alex Oliver:                   … mayor of a US city with at least 100,000 residents, which is not very big. But, supremely qualified, Harvard, Oxford, Rhodes Scholar, McKinsey, intelligence officer, having served for I think for seven months abroad. I think that would be a fascinating chat too.

Misha Zelinsky:             Well, I tell you, so we would have an ambassador, a KGB spy, the head of a think tank, and a presidential candidate and then-

Alex Oliver:                   Pretty good huh?

Misha Zelinsky:             … all at a pollster’s house.

Alex Oliver:                   And all alive.

Misha Zelinsky:             At a pollster’s house, so it’s almost like you feel like as though, there’s a good focus group there, but look thank you so much for joining us Alex. It’s been a fantastic chat and I hope everyone’s learned just as much as I did.

Alex Oliver:                   Good luck with the editing. Thanks Misha.

Misha Zelinsky:             Thanks.

 

Gillian Triggs

Gillian Triggs was Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner – and is someone that doesn’t require introduction.  Formerly the Dean of the Sydney Law School and now Professor of the Melbourne Law School – she is a globally recognised legal authority on human rights and is author of the book ‘Speaking Up’. 

Gillian Triggs caught up with Misha Zelinsky to talk about all things related to foreign and domestic human rights.

It was an incredibly diverse discussion covering issues such as the rule of law, the future of democracy, how governments use executive power to bully individuals, how do deal with indigenous reconciliation and why Australia lags so far behind in when it comes to tangible gender equality.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Misha Zelinsky: So, Gillian Triggs, welcome to the show.

 

Gillian Triggs: It’s a great pleasure to be talking to you.

 

Misha Zelinsky: And, well, thanks so much for joining us. Now, I was thinking, there were so may places we could start this conversation. You know, global human rights, a lot of people will say that things are tracking terribly, and you can point to lots of data points that will say things are going badly. We’ve got rise of autocracy, populism, et cetera. Other people say things are going well. Infant child mortality’s on the way down. Living standards are up across the world. So, would you class yourself as a pessimist or an optimist? I mean it’s a broad topic but maybe we’ll start with it.

 

Gillian Triggs: Well, I’m definitely an optimist, and I think that there are significant improvements in human rights globally, partly because we live in a global environment, so that we’re much better informed about what’s happening than we ever used to be. But there are some pockets of absolute horror, one, of course, being the Rohingya, the civil war in the Yemen at the moment, the continuing problems of Palestine and Israel in the Middle East, and poverty in certain pockets in the world that is really appalling.

 

But I’d have to say that, on balance, I think that we are inching our way forward. I read, just by way of an example, because it’s International Women’s Week this week, I’ve been doing a number of speeches on the advances for women globally, as well as in Australia, and the irony of this report by the World Economic Forum is that women are actually doing better progressively, in developing countries, and in developed countries, they are actually regressing. Now that’s an extraordinary fact, apparently, documented by the World Economic Forum [crosstalk].

 

Misha Zelinsky: I think that would come as a big surprise to a lot of people-

 

Gillian Triggs: Yeah, it would.

 

Misha Zelinsky: … because I think the discourse at the moment would suggest, with the Me Too movement, et cetera … and we’ll probably pick up gender a little later on, but that’s just a … I’d like to return to that, actually, if we could.

 

Just in terms of one of the big trends we’re seeing at the moment, you know, the end of the Cold War, there was this sort of march of democracy, liberal democracy, and free markets, and now … and that seemed an inevitability at the end of-

 

Gillian Triggs: The Arab Spring. [crosstalk].

 

Misha Zelinsky: Yes. All these things, and now we’re seeing, perhaps, things swinging the other way. Not only the more nascent democracies falling into autocracy, but we’re seeing populists being elected in very established democracies. I mean, do you see that as a problem for human rights, more generally?

 

Gillian Triggs: I do see it as a problem. I think there’s been an extraordinary phenomenon of a rejection of some of the underpinning elements of contemporary democracy, that I thought would lead us onwards and upwards, but are now being challenged, particularly, of course, the major human rights treaties, the Refugee Convention. But the Convention on the Rights of the Child, where children are being detained, in unprecedented ways, for unprecedented periods of time.

 

So, I think that we are in a very disruptive, tumultuous global environment where we have … I mean, you almost can’t have this conversation without discussing the influence of Trump on the post-truth world we live in. The things that I thought were crucial in my early days from university, the 60s, the 70s, 80s, all the way through. Fact-based policy making was crucial. The reliance on evidence, science was king, in my youth. Today, governments may receive reports from experts on all sorts of issues, climate change, trade war issues, rising inequality, the loss of the manufacturing sector and the rise of IT, all of these areas are subject to factual reports and expert evidence, but governments are increasingly free to ignore them, and to challenge them, or reject them.

 

Misha Zelinsky: People are even making it a virtue. During the Brexit debate there was a … you know, people are sick of hearing from so-called experts.

 

Gillian Triggs: Right.

 

Misha Zelinsky: But what’s the way to address that? How do you actually cut through in that situation? Because, you’re right, when you don’t have facts, and when my opinion’s as good as your fact, that becomes very difficult-

 

Gillian Triggs: That’s right.

 

Misha Zelinsky: … to actually have an agreed starting point. Because it used to be, you know, you’d have, here’s where we’re starting, and perhaps we should go left or right, but now we can’t even agree on the starting point of the facts. So, what is a way that you think you can actually address that?

 

Gillian Triggs: Well, I’m hoping that this is a phase, that we’re dealing with a truculent child almost, and in some … some respects we are. There’s been a very interesting piece of work done recently in Australia, between the New Democracy group, which is a very interesting approach to expanding the role of the community in civil society and the democratic processes, along with the Institute for Public Affairs, which, in my view, is an extreme right-wing vehicle for misinformation. But nonetheless, apparently they’ve worked together, and I happened to be present at some of the New Democracy meetings, to get a sense of what was one of the most … what was a top priority for a good functioning liberal democracy? And both those entities, coming from different spectrums, agreed with their participants that the number one thing of importance now in Australia was evidence-based policy making.

 

In other words, there’s a … Those who think about these sorts of things, and see the threats, in my case, to classical, long-established principles of international human rights law and treaties, that underpin much of what was happening in Australia in this area, right up until the 90s, I feel that we must get back to that fact-, evidence-based policy making process. And it’s clear that the fact that we’re not, that governments are so quick to override them, ignore them, whether it’s on climate change or defense policy, that’s been extremely … I think it worries a lot of people.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Yeah, and so, interesting is you’ve talked about facts and evidence. You’ve got a legal background. Think of, what’s the role of the rule of law in all these things, in terms of human rights? You’ve mentioned before, the deficit of democracy is starting to creep in, and the advance of technology, so quickly, in a lot of areas, with data retention laws, and facial recognition, and all of these things. I mean, what’s the role of the rule of law here in preserving, particularly in advanced democracies, preserving human rights?

 

Gillian Triggs: Look, I think that’s an important question, because the phrase ‘the rule of law’ slips off politicians’ lips as it does off lawyers’ lips, and those looking for social justice or civil society. It’s a very key principle, and … but it’s made up of different ideas. One is that it’s absolutely dependent … Well, the rule of law absolutely depends upon a liberal democracy, a functioning liberal democracy. Separation of powers, between executive government parliament and the judiciary, which is severely under threat in Australia at the moment, with the rise of executive decision making and discretions that are not subject to judicial review, for practical purposes.

 

So, those are the elements of the rule of law. More precisely, it might be that one has to emphasis not so much the legislation passed by Parliament, which is the law, but the rule of law is broader than what Parliament might have just passed last week. In other words, it encompasses common law principles.

 

And if I could give you a very, very quick example, a federal court judge has recently ruled that a child with … who’s been attempting suicide on Nauru should be brought to Australia, ordering the Minister for Home Affairs, Mr. Dutton, to do so, contrary to his views, it’s feared. The minister has stopped this over the previous nine months.  What this judge did was look beyond the precise terms of the Migration Act, to look at the duty of care that governments owe unto their citizens. Now that’s a sort of broad common law principle that’s embraced within the idea of legality and proper process, and what he said was that the government owed this duty of care to the child, and, therefore, the child had to be brought to Australia for psychiatric and medical care.

 

So, that’s one example, but there are many others that are essentially dependent upon transparency, fundamental common law principles, the right not to be detained arbitrarily without charge or trial, for example, the right of criminal trials before you’re detained. These are fundamental ideas of the rule of law. So, that’s what I mean by the rule of law, and I think we’ve lost track of what that means. I think many Australians, if you ask them on the street, they’ll say, “Well, you know, if that’s what the Parliament has passed as a law, then that’s the rule of law.” It isn’t actually the rule of law, the rule of law is the … are deeper fundamental principles.

 

Misha Zelinsky: That’s an interesting point. So, in terms of … you know, the rule of law, these things have tended to come from western liberal democracies, in the way you’ve just explained it. Do you think that this … the lack of … as we’ve eroded our principles in this space, and … has it made it more difficult to prosecute a human rights agenda more globally? Because if you’re not living up to your own ideals, how do you … You know, when you look at some of the examples you’ve cited, the Rohingya, or if you look at the Uighurs in China, is it a-

 

Gillian Triggs: Yes, indeed.

 

Misha Zelinsky: … difficult thing to highlight in other countries, perhaps, that are more autocratic, when they say, “Well, you know, you guys aren’t living up to your own ideals at home”?

 

Gillian Triggs: That’s always a difficult position to be in. I mean, other governments in the Human Rights Council, for example, have been very critical of Australia’s incarceration rates for Indigenous Australians, the highest in the world, violence against women, deaths of women in domestic violence, and of course, asylum seeker refugee policies. So, Australia is getting a lot wrong, but when we come to, say, dealing with the Chinese, on, let’s say … let’s take the Uighur in China or Myanmar on the Rohingya, it’s very hard to argue, and persuade those countries, because they are not culturally, historically, as committed to the rule of law, in the way that I’ve described it.

 

They will see the autonomy of the state, the right to … for a state to manage its own peoples, in the way they see fit. Human rights are for the state, not for the international community. It will be interference in their domestic policies. The Chinese will always say that, so it’s extremely difficult, and that partly adds to the argument that human rights are not universal, but they are a Western construct. I don’t believe that that’s true. The truth is that China, and Japan, and many other Asian countries, African, Latin American countries, support the basic principles of the rule of law. And the Chinese talk about the rule of law. The trouble is that there’s a huge discrepancy between the rhetoric and the reality.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Well, it’s often easy to talk about, but what are the safeguards … I’d like to get your opinion on this. One of the safeguards that those who have studied democracy, and when you go to the United States, prime example, the Bill of Rights, and the way the concerns you had, where if you … the primacy of parliament over all laws, or if … to say, well, there’s a check and balance, and they typically have the courts. Another way to do that is to have a Bill of Rights. Now, Australia, of course, doesn’t have one. There’s always been debate about whether or not we should have one. What’s the role of a bill of rights in human rights, from the respect … within a democracy?

 

Gillian Triggs: Well, I think we have to be … firstly, distinguish between the sort of American system, where they’ve got a constitutionally entrenched Bill of Rights. That gives the Supreme Court, and other courts in America, an enormous level of power. They are a very powerful check and balance on the power of the executive. Executive … the decision-making of the current government, for example, and on the powers of Congress. In other words, if something is passed, or a low is passed, which breaches those fundamental rights, the right to equality before the law, the right to freedom of speech, et cetera, then the American courts have the right to strike it down. And that’s a very powerful remedy.

 

But then we have the other kind of model, which most other countries are more familiar with, and more comfortable with, and that is a legislated human rights charter. Britain, Canada, New Zealand, just to name a very few, have legislated human rights charters. Australia is the only democracy in the world, and the only common law country in the world, that doesn’t have one. So, if you’re in Canada, New Zealand, France, Germany, many, many, many countries have these charters, you can go to the courts and say, “The Parliament is passing laws, or proposes to pass law, that is in breach of the Charter of Rights.” The court, depending on the terms of the legislation, may, and this is what’s called the dialogue model, will be able to say, “Well, the law that Parliament’s planning to pass, or has passed … is in violation of these … of one of the rights in the Charter, but we now are … we won’t … we’re going to strike it down. We can’t make it invalid. What we can do is send it back to Parliament, and ask Parliament to re-draft what they’re doing, so that it complies with the Charter.”

 

So, it’s creating this sort of dialogue between the executive parliament and the courts. But it’s nothing like as powerful, really, as … Well, most models are not as powerful as that. It’s interesting that … the state of Victoria, here in Australia, has such a dialogue model, and Queensland just voted for one, two or three days ago.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Do you think … you know, notwithstanding that … So, the constitutional model brings with it its own problems. The United States Supreme Court now has become a battleground for partisans, in a way, and particularly, you see problems around, you know, the Second Amendment, with gun rights, and those types of things. Do you think this sort of consultative model is a better way? Leaving aside how realistic it would be to get a referendum up in Australia on a constitutional bill of rights. We have a checkered history here with getting referendums passed. But do you … Which model do you think is better?

 

Gillian Triggs: Well, I think the best answer for me to give is to say that, in the current political and historical environment of Australia, we will not get an entrenched constitutional bill of rights. So, for practical purposes, you’ve just got to say it isn’t going to happen. I’m very much coming to the view that Australians, over time, have preferred, if you like, a parliamentary sovereignty model. They don’t like the idea of the courts being too powerful, but they want proper check and balance on executive governments. What they’d rather … I think most Australians would rather do is to give Parliament the stronger power.

 

Now, my problem with that is that Parliament has actually explicitly breached fundamental human rights in legislation, and particularly over the last 15 years or so, so that you can’t rely on Parliament to ensure fundamental human rights. So, where I come down is to say, I think, because things often have to be taken in steps, so that people learn to trust the system, I think if we had a legislated charter, a longer dialogue model, just to get everybody used to it, so that the courts could hold up Parliament and say, “You’ve just passed a piece of legislation that is in breach of fundamental rights under the Charter. We now ask you to go back and look at it again.” Now, that does make it … it politicizes it of course, but it’s not giving the power … absolute power to the courts.

 

Misha Zelinsky: How would you settle what goes in … So, let’s assume that a government of the day was to legislate the charter. What goes in the charter? I mean is it … is that [crosstalk]-

 

Gillian Triggs: Well, Queensland’s just done it. Now, one thing that a lot of people raised with me, on public debates about this is, “Oh, well, we don’t want an American system, because we don’t want the right to bear arms to be interpreted in the way that it has been.” Well, of course, I can’t imagine for a second that Australia would ever want a right to bear arms. Australians don’t have arms. We have no history of that.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Yeah, and I think we’re quite … I mean, the John Howard gun reforms, I think, are very well received and for all the-

 

Gillian Triggs: Very well received. It was a very, very important move that he made, to use that moment of power, to reduce the right of access to these kinds of guns, and I think the Australian public has been right behind it. So, with exceptions, I think, we just saw on the news last night two more people shot dead in Sydney and another couple in Melbourne, I mean, it’s going on all the time. People are still having guns illegally and killing each other with them, but it’s not in … not remotely comparable to the United States, and I don’t think Australians would be tolerant of any provision of a charter that allowed an individual right to carry guns. I think that’s out of the question, so I think we can put that one to one side.

 

Perhaps the more controversial one, that we probably would have to think about, because you’ll have right to freedom of speech, right to privacy, right to freedom of association, et cetera, et cetera, but the one that would be likely to raise the greatest level of debate, I suspect, would be the right of Indigenous peoples to self-determination, or to recognition of their culture, and right to, let’s say, an advisory voice to Parliament. Well, you could include provisions of that kind in the charter, and many, perhaps, would be … will be concerned about that.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Would you bundle the two things together? I mean, it strikes me, perhaps Indigenous issues … I mean, that … You know, and I’ve experienced … You know, I was formerly a defense lawyer with the Aboriginal Legal service, you know, so these issues are dear to my heart. But I wonder whether or not there is a case for that to be dealt with-

 

Gillian Triggs: Mm-hmm (affirmative), separately.

 

Misha Zelinsky: … on its own merits. I mean, I don’t know …

 

Gillian Triggs: I think it … Just as it was odd to have a constitution that didn’t really talk about our First Nations peoples, I think it’d be very odd to have a charter of rights that didn’t. The Queensland one has got recognition of the cultural and spiritual, sort of heritage and importance of the Indigenous peoples to Australia. I forget the exact wording. But I think that’s a pretty powerful recognition of Indigenous as the First Australians, and that their right to be consulted in relation to matters that concern them.

 

Now it doesn’t have to be all … well, it could be along … with that kind of language, cultural respect, and so on. But I am … I mean, I haven’t thought through in my own mind how to handle this, really. I would hate to see us not go forward with constitutional change to recognize Indigenous Australians at the … you know, in order to get a charter of human rights. I think constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians and to eliminate the race power from the constitution are absolute constitutional priorities. And I think with political leadership, we could do it.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Where do you think the debate’s at on the Indigenous acknowledgment question? Because it seemed we were moving towards a Respect-

 

Gillian Triggs: That’s right.

 

Misha Zelinsky: … campaign, and then suddenly there was Uluru Statement from the Heart …

 

Gillian Triggs: The Recognise campaign. Mm-hmm (affirmative), that’s right.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Sorry, the Recognise campaign, apologies.

 

Gillian Triggs: Yeah, and then the … the Uluru-

 

Misha Zelinsky: And then the Uluru, and then, seems now there’s a split, and you know, history shows, unfortunately, that you need bipartisan support on referendums in Australia, given the high bar to get over the-

 

Gillian Triggs: That’s right.

 

Misha Zelinsky: … you know, the vote.

 

Gillian Triggs: I think that’s right. I’ve come to see political leadership and bipartisanship absolutely vital to really moving forward. It’s very, very hard in Australia in the current polarized, and really quite toxic, political environment. I think it’s a tragedy, but I do think it’s enormously important that we get recognition. I mean, it was extraordinary, after the Uluru Statement from the Heart and the Australian Human Rights Commission was engaged with assisting with the collaboration and discussions, across the whole of Australia, to get some agreement on that Uluru statement. So, we were a little bit involved with it, but mainly through Mick.

 

But I think the key point is that that was dismissed by the then Prime Minister within 48 hours, with no explanation. I think that’s horrified a lot of Australians. I think they see that as grossly disrespectful of a process that was actually a coherent process, over about 10 months, I think, and not easy for the Indigenous community … communities across Australia, to agree on that statement. They had to compromise, and they had to work it through and I think that was very commendable.

 

And what they were asking for was so little, just to have a voice of advice and consultation on the matters that concern them. It’s not a major … You wouldn’t have thought it was a major request. The Prime Minister could easily have said, “Look, this is terrific. Let us go away and work out how we can make this work.” But with the leadership of the Prime Minister, I think we could have got there.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Well, it’s also strikes me, on this question, that we need to have a national … There’s a whole heap of issues bundled in with this. You’ve got the Australia Day thing, and then you’ve got the question of a republic, and then the Indigenous question, and how to deal with reconciliation. It strikes me that … I’m a person, I think a republic is a good way to deal with some of these issues, because it’ll allow us to update what it is to be … have a modern and inclusive Australia, and perhaps, within that, the Indigenous question could be resolved as well, without the colonial symbols. But do you think that’s a pathway forward for it? Or is it, again, these are all sort of … you know …

 

Gillian Triggs: I don’t really. Not anymore. I think there was a time when we could have got close to it, and that would have been the wonderful springboard for sort of modern Australia. But that moment’s lost now, I’m afraid. I think the republican movement’s going nowhere. It’s going backwards, from what I can gather, and that’s not happening. So, I think, with the extraordinary popularity of the Royal Family at the moment, and the weddings, and the visits, it … I think, Australians, it’s way down their list of priorities. I suspect that if we had strong political leadership, again, at a bipartisan basis, I think you could probably get it across the line, but there’s no political will to do it.

 

Misha Zelinsky: It’s tricky. I mean, we just had two Prime … well, we had a Prime Minister, up until recently, and an opposition leader who were both republicans. We had the Prime Minister who led the republican movement in 1999, and unfortunately, couldn’t get there, even within that. And now, obviously, a whole heap of issues on the … that I won’t delve into, with the Turnbull government. I mean, he had capacity to make those decisions, but it doesn’t fill you with confidence when you notionally have bipartisan leadership, without that-

 

Gillian Triggs: That’s right.

 

Misha Zelinsky: … without that outcome.

 

Gillian Triggs: Well, I was in Parliament when we did have bipartisan leadership, with Julia Gillard as Prime Minister, and Tony Abbot as Leader of the Opposition. And they passed the legislation, it was about five years ago now, for a process, and it was a very exciting day in Parliament. I was there with a … some people from the Human Rights Commission, and I really thought, now, for the first time, we’re going to get somewhere on Indigenous recognition. And five years later, it’s fallen into yet another black hole. It’s going nowhere. It’s disappeared completely. Now, it may be … and that’s why I’m an optimist about these things. It may be that we’ll get a change of government in three months, and I think with … over the turn of that government-

 

Misha Zelinsky: I’m touching wood on that, for the tape.

 

Gillian Triggs: … I think … That’s right. I think there’s a chance that the Labor Party would bring these matters back and progress them. But the difficulty is always going to be that there’s not going to be bipartisan support.

 

Misha Zelinsky: And that’s the bit that worries me. I mean, I think Labor has good policies in this area, but the history has shown that, even when Labor’s been in government, with referenda, that they’ve failed.

 

Gillian Triggs: That’s right.

 

Misha Zelinsky: So, I mean, just to bring us back to Australia in a … maybe a discourse, you sort of touched on, you know, maybe once upon a time we could’ve got some of these things done, and you know, Wayne Swan gave his valedictory speech the other day and he talked about the Tampa crisis, how it changed everything, in 2001. I mean, do you see that? Do you agree that that was a pivot point in Australia’s discourse?

 

Gillian Triggs: I do. Although I’d add to that. If you look at the timing, it was really fascinating. Earlier in the year, we had the Howard blatant lie that asylum seekers, Muslims, were throwing their children overboard. Now, a year or so later, a Senate inquiry said there was not a scintilla of evidence to support that, and the government, and government officials, had falsified photographs to pretend that that … to support the argument. There was a really pretty disgraceful moment, but the problem was that, some months later, we had the so-called Tampa crisis, a really confected crisis, and then within weeks of that, we had the 9/11.

 

So, that what you … In that momentous year, you had asylum seekers arriving without visas by boat, you had … and you had international terrorism against the Pentagon and the World … the Twin Towers. And what the Howard government did, and governments did around the world, was conflate these issues, and that you’ve got asylum seekers, who are Muslims, who are terrorist, and that’s how the logic progressed. And that has been very, very, very difficult to dislodge in the public mind.

 

If you could trace the beginning of the decline of Australia’s role as a good international human rights system, that was the year. And Howard then abused the power, and used power as a vehicle for getting through laws that are more draconian than we’ve ever had in the past. For example, we had no counter-terrorism laws at all at 2001. We’re now one of the most, if not the most, heavily legislated country for counter-terrorism laws, that every so many weeks or months, we get more counter-terrorism laws, that become more and more draconian as the time goes by. [crosstalk]-

 

Misha Zelinsky: Things such as data retention laws?

 

Gillian Triggs: Well, the data retention laws, dealing with, obviously, sort of picking up things that might be relevant to spying, but also, the prevention orders, and control orders, the periods of time people can be held for questioning [crosstalk]-

 

Misha Zelinsky: Without a lawyer?

 

Gillian Triggs: Without a lawyer. Without going before a court-

 

Misha Zelinsky: And it can’t be reported on, either.

 

Gillian Triggs: And they can’t report on it. The draconian penalties for those who have reported on surveillance operations by … or any operations by the security agencies, whereas the officers of the security agencies have total immunity from the jurisdiction. No one can … They can never be sued for anything they do, right or wrong. And so, we’ve had an extraordinarily disproportionate range of laws introduced, based upon this notion of fear that the government has promoted, without very much evidence.

 

And if you look at, by way of comparison, more than one woman a week is killed by her partner, or former partner, in domestic violence in Australia. Some of that being particularly, or much higher, in the Indigenous communities, and remote and rural communities. The government announces 78 million to support domestic violence refuges and accomodation for women. Well, you know, in the same time, we’ve paid, or will be paying, 50 billion dollars a year for more submarines, and for funding of offshore detention centers, and expanding the powers of the Ministry for Home Affairs, and Mr. Dutton. I’m not saying we don’t have submarines. I’m not saying we shouldn’t support national security, but I am saying that there’s such a gross disproportionality, that this has been made possible because of the politics of fear.

 

Misha Zelinsky: It’s interesting, politics of fear, because what’s your take on this question of secure borders and sovereignty? Because I think that’s something now that … we look at the Brexit example, when you look at the way populist extremists are arising, in Europe in particular, and when you look at, you know,~ the Hungarian example, particular, Polish, how do you deal with being secure but humane?

 

Gillian Triggs: Well, I think it’s possible. In other words, there’s the Abbott government, in particular, adopted very successful slogans that, in effect, you have to have offshore processing, and all of the other aspects of asylum seeker policy, to stop the boats and save the drownings at sea. In other words, he conflated the two. It’s a false binary. My argument, and that of many others, of course, is that you can both stop the boats, stop the people smuggling, stop people arriving by sea without visas, and take a humane approach to those who actually come to Australia. That’s the bit of the argument that’s proved so hard to convince people about.

 

But one of the reasons is that I don’t think the Australian public realizes the sort of steel cordon sanitaire of shipping that’s up there on the north-west of Australia, that literally stops the boats coming through. Stopping the boats has not been done because we’re cruel to children and their families on Nauru. There’s no evidence to suggest that at all. But that is the public perception, because governments have seen it in their interests to conflate the two. So that we now have people in detention for nearly seven years, without charge or trial, contrary to the fundamental principles of the Magna Carta, let alone anything more recent. You don’t have to go past the Magna Carta. But Australia has … our government, at least, has completely disregarded those standards.

 

Misha Zelinsky: So, what’s the role of language here? Because one of the things that, you know, is … You’ve talked about how to be humane and it’s also … There’s an element of dehumanization in the language used. Do you think that’s an important part of this? In the way that, you know, the fear of the other, and the fear of people that are coming by armada, as Abbott said. Do you think the-

 

Gillian Triggs: That’s right.

 

Misha Zelinsky: … dehumanizing use of language, of boat people, in a … I mean-

 

Gillian Triggs: Yes, that right, and illegals. Yes. Oh, it’s-

 

Misha Zelinsky: Illegal immigrants, you know-

 

Gillian Triggs: … it’s absolutely crucial. This is the world we’re in, of global media, and the snappy phrase, and the slogan. So, people Make America Great Again, and Save Our Children, and Save Our National Borders. I mean, this is how today’s politician speaks. There’s no depth to it, there’s no analysis, there’s no nuance. It’s absolutely crystal clear for a massive voting public that actually doesn’t want to get much involved in politics, in any event, so it’s … it’s been a brilliant marketing exercise, if you like. It’s no accident, of course, that our current Prime Minister is a marketing man. I mean, this is what they do. They conjure up these slogans.

 

The trouble is that the slogans are very often straight out lies, or creating binaries that don’t exist, they’re false binaries. Or they are deliberately obfuscating the real issues. Language has always been important, I’m not suggesting it hasn’t, but in recent years, particularly in Australia, the use of the slogans has really stopped people thinking. They’re very, very dangerous, and I certainly encourage anybody to look behind the slogans and say what’s there.

 

One that I’ve been working on recently, for example, is the Zero Tolerance in sexual assault and harassment. Now, you know, from … I’ve just finished a report for the United Nations on this question, and leaders of, even of United Nations bodies, seem to think that all you’ve got to do is come up with a slogan, ‘We have zero tolerance for sexual harassment in the workplace,’ and it’s fixed. But of course, it isn’t. It’s just a slogan, and it means nothing unless you put money, and programs, and cultural change, and all sorts of things behind the slogan. Only then do you start to actually get anywhere. But the harsh reality is that this is the global media environment we live in.

 

Misha Zelinsky: It’s very challenging, and then the media tends to reward the snappy phrase, and-

 

Gillian Triggs: Oh, they love it.

 

Misha Zelinsky: … they’re the things that cut through-

 

Gillian Triggs: They just love it.

 

Misha Zelinsky: … and, despite the fact that they tut-tut about slogans, they like to report on them.

 

Gillian Triggs: [crosstalk] they report on them all the time. They do it all the time, and they love the … you know, if you … for … Just by way of personal example, I’ve been talking a lot recently about … for the International Women’s Day, and I use the phrase, you know, that we’ve got to disrupt, and we’ve got to stand up, and I’ve used the word, and we’ve even got to be more vulgar. Now, the word ‘vulgar’ isn’t used very much in contemporary parlance. The media picked up on it, and suddenly all my speeches are about being vulgar.

 

But that’s what they do, and in the end, you learn to use a word deliberately, because you know that’s the word that’s going to be picked up. I can write a 50 minute speech of … you know, a really considered, calm piece. they’ll pick one word up, and you know the word they’re going to pick up. You know what they’re going to do.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Well, if you know, I suppose you can use it to your advantage.

 

Gillian Triggs: Well, exactly. Once you’ve realized how to do it, then you realize that that’s what … It’s a deliberate decision, and then, in other words, you don’t fall into the trap. You know exactly what you’re doing.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Now, you sort of talked … which, going right back to the beginning, we talked a little bit about checks and balances on government, and in the absence of a bill of rights here, or a charter of rights, that we rely on our court system, our parliaments, but … and our civil societies, but you know, what’s the role of individuals? You were a Human Rights Commissioner. You very famously stood up to the Government. Can you tell us a little bit about the pressure that comes to bear from the executive, on someone speaking out against government policy?

 

Gillian Triggs: Well, as I think Australia saw, it’s huge pressure, but I had the remarkable protection of the statue of the Australian Human Rights Commission, which meant that I couldn’t be sacked by the government, unless I’ve committed a criminal act, or was bankrupt, and as I was neither at that time, still aren’t, then there was nothing they could do about it. And the government was really … and the Murdoch press was absolutely beside themselves, because they realized they were absolutely powerless, unless they could find something that would damn me, in terms of the statute, which they didn’t.

 

But I think your point about the individual is quite an important one, because I certainly would never have put myself forward for this role, but you find yourself in it, and in the end, you just accept the challenge, or you don’t. I felt that the laws that were being breached were so important to a working democracy that I couldn’t really back away from it, and so I just stood firm. But I didn’t see myself as being any kind of hero for doing this. I very much saw myself as acting as a lawyer would, in that situation, because I was saying, “This is the law. These are the facts. This is the outcome.” It was simple.

 

But I have come to see that people are moved by stories, and moved by individual stories, and an institution could put the arguments I was putting, but it wouldn’t have quite the same effect as an individual. And in a way, the government drew attention to me, and that then gave me a vehicle for speaking up about the things that I thought were important as President. So, I suppose the lesson to be learned is, one should never underestimate the power of the individual, because it can be very, very effective.

 

Misha Zelinsky: But, you know, how do you stand up in … without the … would you have been able to stand up the way that you had, without all those safeguards around you?

 

Gillian Triggs: No, I would have been out of there in an hour. I couldn’t have stopped it. But because the law protected me, the statute protected me, and the community, to a very high degree, in a more subtle way. But no, without those protections, I would have been gone instantly.

 

Misha Zelinsky: That’s a really … It’s a profound point because you know … And they’re the safeguards that are gradually being eroded right … as we’ve sort of discussed.

 

Gillian Triggs: That’s right. That’s right. Exactly. Yes, exactly, I mean, and that’s … You know, I wouldn’t be surprised that a future conservative government, which we’re probably not going to get for a while, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised, if they had the numbers, they would amend the statute to ensure that doesn’t happen, in other words, that if they don’t like a president they can get rid of them.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Sounds like an argument for a charter of rights maybe, but …

 

Gillian Triggs: Well, that’s another … it’s another point. Exactly.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Now, so, we’ve sort of touched on gender as we’ve gone along. I kind of want to come back to the point about the advanced democracies, and the rest of the world. Sorry, just for the tape here, we’re pulling down the blinds. You’ve said that, basically, perhaps against discourse, or, like, against the narrative, that gender rights are on the decline, which is a surprise to me. Can you talk about that a little bit? Perhaps in a global sense but also in Australia?

 

Gillian Triggs: Well, if we go to Australia first, I’ve been surprised myself, and I’ve … over the … I’ve not done a lot of gender equality work, as President of the Commission, because we had a sex discrimination commissioner, and so, really, I would leave that side of the work to, at that time, Elizabeth Broderick. But since leaving the Commission, I’m asked to speak a lot on the subject, so I’ve been trying to keep myself up to date. And I use, as my benchmark, and it’s a very good one, the World Economic Forum’s Gender index, and that, not at all surprisingly, lists Australian women as number one in the world for educational attainment, along with the usual suspects of Finland and Denmark, I think.

 

But then, when you look at the other indices measured by the world economic forum, health, labor force participation, and economic empowerment, and political engagement, Australia is woefully behind, and we’ve slipped from a global assessment of us at 15th in the world in 2006, to 46th a couple of years ago.

 

Misha Zelinsky: 46th?

 

Gillian Triggs: Yes, and we’ve risen to 39th, but we are well outside the usual zone of countries that we will compare ourselves with. So, for example, on health, we’re ranked at 103rd.

 

Misha Zelinsky: 103rd for women’s health? Wow.

 

Gillian Triggs: Yes. For women’s health. We’re ranked at 46 for economic empowerment, and about 45 for political empowerment. We’re 77th in the world for ministerial appointments.

 

Misha Zelinsky: What do you put that … That’s startling, and I can’t sort of … As an economist, I’m trying to put together that data. First in the world for education-

 

Gillian Triggs: That’s right.

 

Misha Zelinsky: … which I think, it’s outstanding achievement, so-

 

Gillian Triggs: But way down on all the others, and then that … when you come together, it creates a mean of 39, I think is how it works, but … and you can criticize methodology, [crosstalk]-

 

Misha Zelinsky: Oh, sure. But nevertheless, I’m sure there’s-

 

Gillian Triggs: … but the figures are so powerful that you can’t dismiss the trend.

 

Misha Zelinsky: So, then what are we getting wrong in public policy? Because the kind of standard thinking is, if you get people educated they should be able to get jobs, and they should be able to get a higher income and-

 

Gillian Triggs: That’s right.

 

Misha Zelinsky: So, what’s going wrong?

 

Gillian Triggs: Well that’s the great disappointment for me, because when I did my law degree in the 60s, I thought, “Education will unlock this world for women, and it will be fine once they’re educated.” The truth is that higher educational attainment for women, it’s higher than for men, has not unlocked the door for me, or not fully. One of the biggest problems, I think, and it’s shown by the statistics, is … two things, one is lack of political empowerment, and we’ve seen that in the governments that have been in, in the last few years, particularly. Obviously, the Liberal Coalition, with so few women, is a real problem for the Liberal Party, but whereas the Labor Party’s adopted quotas in the 90s and they’ve got … they’re in an entirely different position.

 

But the other, that we’re all concentrating on now, much more than we ever have done, is the deleterious effect on women of a workplace of sexual harassment and bullying. And that is more of a systemic problem than I think we’ve realized, until the last few years, and now it seems that the evidence is very, very clear.

 

The other problem that I think needs to be addressed is that women do two thirds of the caring, unpaid, in Australia, and it’s true throughout the world, so that a lot of women’s time is spent on, essentially, caring roles, for which they’re never paid. The other is that women tend to be squeezed into fractional, flexible contracts, casualization of work, they’re way … in ways that men are not, to the same degree. The end result is that, in Australia, women retire on 46 percent of the male superannuation.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Yeah, that’s a huge challenge.

 

Gillian Triggs: That’s a very, very big gap, and, just to illustrate what happens when women don’t have superannuation, is that the fastest growing category of homelessness in Australia is women over 55. In other words, they are not able, if, once they’re running out of work options, and women over 55 find it very hard to get work, except in some areas, like hospital cleaners, factory cleaning, basic factory work.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Which is all very lowly paid.

 

Gillian Triggs: That’s right, very low paid, casual, subject to the employer’s needs, in particular, time. It’s nothing they could … couldn’t get a mortgage on it. They can’t pay the rent after 55. They lose their partners, sometimes. Their children have grown up and gone away, and they’re sofa surfing. They’re ringing their sons up, saying, “Can I stay on the sofa for a few weeks?” But others are living in cars. And we know, from the group that I chair, Justice Connect, just how many people. They’re in a really powerless position, and many of them women.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Homelessness for women is very hidden, as well, because of the domestic violence questions associated with it as well, and fleeing from domestic violence.

 

Gillian Triggs: That’s right.

 

Misha Zelinsky: But it’s not always … People tend to think of homelessness … I mean, my experience of the issue, as rough sleeping, which is not necessarily the case, is that … and maybe, could you explain that a little bit?

 

Gillian Triggs: That right. That’s right. Well, I think we think of a homeless person as being an 18 year old sleeping under a bridge somewhere, or some of the people that are in the shopping malls, with blankets, and the dog, often quite young. Not always, but often. We don’t realize that the homelessness that we can’t see is far more troubling, in some respects, and people are shameful. They live in their cars. They find shacks on the beach. I mean, they do extraordinary things to hide their situation, to try to survive, and then they become subject to crime, or commit crimes themselves. But it creates a downward spiral.

 

Misha Zelinsky: So, how do we fix some of these issues? I mean, you … Just going … pulling apart some of those figures, the health one jumped out of me, but also the ministerial one, at 77, and you know, you talk about quotas. Is that the way that we need to address? Do we address it through hard legislative sort of rules? Or is it about cultural shifts? Or what’s the way to do it? Or both?

 

Gillian Triggs: Well, both. Both. There never is a single answer to these things, just as education proved not to be the single answer. I think we need quotas. It’s worked for the Labor Party. It can work for the Liberals. [crosstalk] encourage-

 

Misha Zelinsky: And would you want to see it in the corporate sector, for example? I mean is that a way to break up that-

 

Gillian Triggs: Well, I’d like to see them with serious targets, for which directors of companies are accountable. At the end of the year, in other words, there’s a checklist, “Did you achieve these targets across the company? If not, why not? And what are you going to do next year?” And also, what’s the accountability mechanism? Because there’s almost no accountability for failing to meet a target, and that’s the point of targets, they’re voluntary, and people-

 

Misha Zelinsky: If they’re linked to bonuses they might happen, but …

 

Gillian Triggs: Well, we’ve just seen, I gather, the salaries of the major banks going down by a significant amount. I think maybe there should be consequences, that … If you gave it a monetary value, and that’s the society we live in, give it a monetary value, there’s every chance you’ll get an outcome. It’s a pretty tough way of doing it, but they’ve had long enough to do it. It’s not as though they haven’t had the time to do it. I think these tougher solutions really have to be made.

 

I think also, frankly, that we need many more programs to support families, so that women aren’t subject to domestic violence in the same way. We need much more workplace cultural change. Now, cultural change is easy to say, and extremely … it’s much easier to have a quota or an accountability mechanism. It’s very, very difficult to change cultures. But I think you need huge leadership from within the organizations, and often those in charge aren’t that passionate about it. What they do is, they establish a working group, and they leave it over there somewhere, in the working group reports, but that’s really not their concern. They’re not there to manage that problem. But I think that, now, we’re going to have to put things like the workplace environment front and center.

 

But I also think we need to look at this superannuation problem, and I think when a woman is leaving … or a man, for that matter, is leaving full-time work for caring for children, or caring for an older parent, or somebody close to them, then I think the employer and government should ensure that their superannuation payments continue at the same level. And then you won’t get these huge gaps. They come back into the workforce, but they haven’t missed out on their superannuation.

 

Misha Zelinsky: And it’s a very important thing, because super compounds over a lifetime-

 

Gillian Triggs: Exactly.

 

Misha Zelinsky: … so losing those earnings isn’t just their contribution, it’s the compounding effect.

 

Gillian Triggs: Yes, I think the American financial gurus say, “Never forget the power of compound interest.”

 

Misha Zelinsky: It’s the eighth wonder of the world, they call it, yeah, that’s right.

 

Gillian Triggs: That’s right. I can see that, it’s a wonderful thing.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Indeed.

 

Gillian Triggs: Once you’ve worked out what it does, compound interest is very, very nice. But that’s been the tragedy for women. And some men too, I mean, this is not only a male, female thing. You don’t want to position women against men, in any sense, it’s just that, because women tend to do the caring, they’re not paid for it, they lose salary, they lose their position with superannuation payments, they lose their promotional opportunities within a firm, and then they just slide back. And then … if their husband or partner dies, or they go off with a new model, these women are left to fend for themselves.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Well, it’s been a very serious conversation. I’ve been looking for a way to segue into my hokey question at the end here, but unfortunately I’m going to have make it a really clunky segue. But you know, I’ll always ask everyone on the show, if you’re an Aussie, who are the foreigners you’d like to bring along to a barbecue. In your case, who would you like to bring to a barbecue at the Triggs house? You know, three people.

 

Gillian Triggs: I’d really like to meet Theresa May. I think she’s dealing with one of the most intractable and difficult problems. I’d love to sit down and talk to her about what she’s proposing, and how she thinks she’s going to pull Britain through this.

 

Misha Zelinsky: She might have a bit more time in about three weeks.

 

Gillian Triggs: They might be extending it. There you go, they’re going to have to. But I think she’s … She seems to be emerging as quite a remarkable woman. So, I’m rather … I’d love to meet her.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Hard job.

 

Gillian Triggs: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Very, very tough job, the toughest job that one can think of just at the moment, and she seems to be pretty resilient, and she’s not very flexible, but she might have to be in the next few weeks.

 

Misha Zelinsky: So, Theresa May. Was there anyone else that you would bring along? To the …

 

Gillian Triggs: Oh. Nothing … Nobody … I’m sorry, this is a terribly boring answer, but I really can’t think. I’d love to have known Maria Callas.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Okay. Right.

 

Gillian Triggs: Because I love opera, and I think she was, again, quite … a quite remarkable woman. And I think I’d love to meet Obama.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Oh, okay, well …

 

Gillian Triggs: And Michelle [crosstalk].

 

Misha Zelinsky: Well, there you go. A couple of politicians. Well, I’ll let you have four, and why not?

 

Gillian Triggs: You’ll let me have four.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Why not? They’re a package deal, and a just actually read Michelle’s book. It was a fantastic book.

 

Gillian Triggs: Oh, I haven’t read it yet. I must read it.

 

Misha Zelinsky: Oh, well. Anyway. Well, thank you so much for joining the pod. It’s been a fantastic chat, and really appreciate it, and good luck with everything that you’re doing.

 

Gillian Triggs: Thank you very much.