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No apology: Howard fires up over Brittany Higgins in new Paul Kelly book · The Front

0:04
Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, July seven, twenty twenty six. Why did the
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Speaker 1: Federal government apologize to Brittany Higgins. The scandal that tore
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Speaker 1: apart Scott Morrison's government and allowed his critics to tear
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Speaker 1: down his character should have been handled with less panic
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Speaker 1: and more of the self confident conservative common sense of old.
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Speaker 1: According to former Prime Minister John Howard, that's just one
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Speaker 1: of a stack of revelations in the Twilight of Exceptionalism,
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Speaker 1: a new book by eminent journalist and historian Paul Kelly.
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Speaker 1: He's a regular here on the Front and The Australian's
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Speaker 1: editor at Large. Paul is breaking huge stories in the book,
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Speaker 1: and we've got the first interview on what happened to
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Speaker 1: Australia and the Federal Coalition during a tumultuous decade here
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Speaker 1: in just a moment. Paul Kelly is The Australian's Editor
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Speaker 1: at Large. He's Australia's most eminent political journalist and I
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Speaker 1: think also our most eminent political historian. Paul, your latest book,
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Speaker 1: The Twilight of Exceptionalism, is a seven hundred and sixty
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Speaker 1: six page whopper. It's a very heavy book in all
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Speaker 1: senses of the word, but it's also got your characteristic
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Speaker 1: lightness and deafness of touch. Your writing is absolutely beautiful
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Speaker 1: and there are some absolute Zinger news stories in here
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Speaker 1: as well. Of course, because it's a Paul Kelly book.
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Speaker 1: I think you are quite tough on Scott Morrison. You
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Speaker 1: say at one point there is no forgiving Morrison's personal
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Speaker 1: flaws and political blunders. You detail those in quite excruciating,
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Speaker 1: excruciating detail, Paul, But one of your fundamental points is
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Speaker 1: that he had kind of been left behind by his
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Speaker 1: own generation. That he had not been I suppose changed
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Speaker 1: by everything that happened after the sexual Revolution, the advent
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Speaker 1: of women into the professional classes, all the other changes
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Speaker 1: that Australia went through. What was it about him that
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Speaker 1: made him be left behind? And why was that bad
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Speaker 1: for him? As Prime minister?
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Speaker 2: I think Scott Morrison was a greatly misunderstood prime minister
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Speaker 2: and part of that was his own fault. Morrison was
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Speaker 2: an old fashioned Australian. He was a very astute and
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Speaker 2: smart politician and minister. He was deeply conservative and deeply religious.
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Speaker 2: His guiding stars were faith, family and country. But he
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Speaker 2: was out of touch with the way politics was changing,
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Speaker 2: and politics was becoming more about feeling, it was becoming
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Speaker 2: more about emotions. This was the age of the me
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Speaker 2: too movement, and Morrison unfortunately got caught up in this
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Speaker 2: debate about female rights. Grace Tame Christine Holgate and then
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Speaker 2: Britney Higgins in terms of the rape of Britney Higgins
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Speaker 2: as subsequently determined by the Federal Court, and Morrison I
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Speaker 2: think struggled in the politics of emotion, the politics of
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Speaker 2: female justice. A number of women felt that he struggled
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Speaker 2: to deal with them in an effective way. The cultural
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Speaker 2: and sexual revolution from the sixties and seventies in a sense,
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Speaker 2: passed Scott Morrison by. Now that's no criticism of him.
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Speaker 2: I just think it's a reality. But what it meant
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Speaker 2: was that when he's Prime Minister and he's dealing with
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Speaker 2: the consequences of a lot of these movements and the
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Speaker 2: quite legitimate demands from women in terms of social, economic,
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Speaker 2: and sexual justice, he had a difficulty coming to grips
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Speaker 2: with this. I think the other problem he had was
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Speaker 2: that he tended to be very aggressive, loose with the
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Speaker 2: truth and developed a credibility problem when it came to
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Speaker 2: the capacity of the electorate to trust what he said.
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Speaker 2: And I think these two problems really undermined him. Now,
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Speaker 2: Anthony ALBANIZI picked this and what happened at the end
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Speaker 2: of the day was Labor waged a ruthless campaign against
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Speaker 2: Morrison's character. Makes too many mistakes.
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Speaker 1: Next time something goes wrong, do you trust him to
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Speaker 1: make it right?
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Speaker 2: That's not my job. They got that right. They picked
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Speaker 2: his vulnerability, and Scott Morrison, when I interviewed him, actually
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Speaker 2: conceded that he thinks what happened when he lost the
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Speaker 2: twenty twenty two election. He feels, I think correctly that
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Speaker 2: he lost this more on character ground and policy grounds.
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Speaker 1: He described himself famously as a bit of a bulldozer,
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Speaker 1: and you look at that in detail in some of
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Speaker 1: his other government decisions. But in relation to the Britney
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Speaker 1: Higgins matter, he seemed to freeze. Then he apologized, I
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Speaker 1: am sorry, we are sorry.
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Speaker 2: I'm sorry to miss Higgins for the terrible things that
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Speaker 2: took place here.
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Speaker 1: He left Fiona Brown, a senior government staff, for feeling
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Speaker 1: completely cut adrift. She made me in that program with
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Speaker 1: the project. More of the villain than Bruce Lahman. Linda Reynolds,
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Speaker 1: the minister who ultimately this destroyed her career. She says
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Speaker 1: that Morrison was not a misogynist, but that he ran
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Speaker 1: a kind of men only government that she seemed to
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Speaker 1: feel kind of excluded from. Interestingly, John Howard said to
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Speaker 1: you about the Brittney Higgins matter with some sort of incredulity,
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Speaker 1: Why did we apologize? Why didn't we just stick to
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Speaker 1: the triade and true formula, which is we're not going
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Speaker 1: to comment on this. It's a matter going through the courts.
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Speaker 1: But I think if Scott Morrison had done that, he
6:05
Speaker 1: would have been flayed alive. What do you think would
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Speaker 1: that have been a better course for Scott Morrison than apologizing,
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Speaker 1: giving Britney Higgins a payout, leaving women in his own
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Speaker 1: government feeling abandoned, and kind of enraging everybody else At
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Speaker 1: the same time, I.
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Speaker 2: Think the Brittney Higgins issue exposed some of Scott Morrison's
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Speaker 2: character flaws and the fact that he had great difficulty
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Speaker 2: coming to grips with this particular issue. Someone who was
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Speaker 2: a very assured politician on most fronts, who saw himself
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Speaker 2: as a pretty reliable political fixer who had a pretty
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Speaker 2: astute capacity to read the electorate. He was at all
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Speaker 2: at sixes and seven's when it came to this issue.
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Speaker 2: When Britney Higgins a couple of years later decided to
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Speaker 2: go public and reveal what had happened to her, that
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Speaker 2: is that she'd been raped. She did this in terms
7:02
Speaker 2: of a coordinated attack on the Morrison government. It felt
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Speaker 2: like it became this was like immediately became sort of
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Speaker 2: a political problem.
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Speaker 1: It felt like that immediately it wasn't.
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Speaker 2: And the argument was that the Morrison government had engaged
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Speaker 2: in a cover up, that it hadn't been concerned about
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Speaker 2: her at all, that it was prepared to sacrifice her career,
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Speaker 2: that it was concerned about its own political fortunes, and
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Speaker 2: she coordinated this assault on the Morrison government with the
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Speaker 2: Labor Party. You just did aged that we put you
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Speaker 2: in hospitals.
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Speaker 1: You just let I put you in hospital at Senator Reynolds.
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Speaker 2: Now, these claims were false. They have demonstrated to be
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Speaker 2: false at great length by Justice Michael Lee in the
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Speaker 2: Federal Court in the long decision he made.
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Speaker 1: Trying to particularize it during the evidence was like trying
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Speaker 1: to grab a column of smoke.
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Speaker 2: Scott Morrison did not handle it well in a political sense.
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Speaker 2: He did not show the sort of empathy that was
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Speaker 2: required at the time. But the central argument made against
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Speaker 2: Morrison by Britney Higgins and her supporters and the Labor
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Speaker 2: Party that Morrison engaged in a political cover up at
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Speaker 2: the time was a false argument. And this was pretty
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Speaker 2: extraordinary because much of the Australian media accepted this argument.
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Speaker 2: They took the line, which is understandable, that when a
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Speaker 2: woman makes an accusation about rape, she's got to be believed,
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Speaker 2: and they extended that to say, and when Britney Higgins
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Speaker 2: is accusing the Morrison government of cover up, she's got
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Speaker 2: to be believed. Well, she doesn't have to be believed
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Speaker 2: on that second issue at all, particularly when she was
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Speaker 2: making a false accusation.
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Speaker 1: You say that Labor was within its right at the
9:00
Speaker 1: time to pursue this issue as it sought to find
9:02
Speaker 1: out exactly what had happened. Was there a way to
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Speaker 1: handle it for him or was it just absolutely impossible
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Speaker 1: once it all started going.
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Speaker 2: I think it was very difficult to handle this issue
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Speaker 2: once it started going, because essentially this was a completely
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Speaker 2: astonishing political event. You had a former Liberal Party staffer
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Speaker 2: going public with an accusation of rape on a popular
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Speaker 2: television program, but linking this accusation to an attack on
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Speaker 2: the Morrison government, claiming it was guilty of a cover
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Speaker 2: up and justice. Lee made the point talking about that
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Speaker 2: TV program that the main emphasis was not the rape,
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Speaker 2: The main emphasis was the false attack on the Morrison government. Now,
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Speaker 2: once that attack had been launched, in that extraordinary situation
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Speaker 2: where you had the bulk of the media accepting a
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Speaker 2: face vau what Britney Higgins had said, and accepting a
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Speaker 2: face failure what the Labor Party was saying, it was
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Speaker 2: very difficult for Morrison, I think to get out of that.
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Speaker 1: The title, why did you call it the Twilight of Exceptionalism?
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Speaker 2: I called it the twilight of exceptionalism because I see
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Speaker 2: this decade, this period of coalition government under Tony Abbott,
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Speaker 2: Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, as a period of underperformance
10:28
Speaker 2: by Australia. We lost our way in this decade. We
10:33
Speaker 2: lost the magic, We lost the sense of Australia as
10:36
Speaker 2: a country that could lead the world. And in the
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Speaker 2: book that phase of history that involved Hawk and Keating
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Speaker 2: and Howard and Costello I've called that the age of
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Speaker 2: Australian exceptionalism. That's when we excelled, That's when we led
10:54
Speaker 2: the world. That's when we were very successful and a
10:58
Speaker 2: much happier country. And that is the defining sense of
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Speaker 2: this book. It's reinforced by Paul Keating who said that
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Speaker 2: when he was Treasurer and Prime Minister, the aim was
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Speaker 2: to make Australia a first rate country, a place with
11:14
Speaker 2: a powerful economic engine and a soul to match. Well,
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Speaker 2: we don't have the engine anymore, and I think the
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Speaker 2: soul is fairly elusive. So essentially, what's happened in the
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Speaker 2: period I think since John Howard ceased to be Prime
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Speaker 2: Minister is that Australia has lost its way and lost
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Speaker 2: its sense of Australian exceptionalism. Hence the title of the book.
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Speaker 1: You say on page thirty three, Paul, that the Liberals
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Speaker 1: won elections during this period, but they lost the battle
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Speaker 1: of ideas. You depict them as a party who since
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Speaker 1: John Howard, really had failed to find a new identity
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Speaker 1: for the new era, and that Australia had changed and
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Speaker 1: really left the Liberal Party behind. In some ways, you
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Speaker 1: draw there're a cast of characters too who are deeply
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Speaker 1: flawed in all sorts of ways, as all human beings are.
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Speaker 1: But you quote John Howard to quite devastating effect saying
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Speaker 1: that the true test is leadership in government and that
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Speaker 1: all three Abbot, Turnbull and Morrison failed that test. I mean,
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Speaker 1: those are harsh words from the former prime minister. I've
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Speaker 1: never read him being quite so. Frank, what's your sense
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Speaker 1: of what went wrong during those years of government under
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Speaker 1: these three prime ministers?
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Speaker 2: The key point to make here is that what happens
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Speaker 2: in this decade is that the Liberal Party, which has
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Speaker 2: been the principal governing party in Australia since World War Two,
12:42
Speaker 2: the Liberal Party loses its psychological grip on the nation.
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Speaker 2: It's a power crisis, it's a leadership crisis, particularly this
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Speaker 2: struggle between Tony Abbot and Malcolm Turnbull. And we have
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Speaker 2: three prime ministers over three terms, Abbot, turn Beyond Scott Morrison.
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Speaker 2: They have different characters. They have a different view of
13:05
Speaker 2: what the Liberal Party is, they have a different view
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Speaker 2: of Australia. The Liberal Party loses its sense of conviction,
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Speaker 2: it loses its sense of belief. It's caught in a
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Speaker 2: revolving door. It's confused, it doesn't know whether it's coming
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Speaker 2: or going under these three leaders, and you can't win
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Speaker 2: a battle of ideas in this sort of situation. I
13:29
Speaker 2: don't want to be too harsh on this period of government.
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Speaker 2: There were significant achievements, but I think the only conclusion
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Speaker 2: to draw overall given what happens at the twenty twenty
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Speaker 2: two election, when under Scott Morrison, Labor wins led by
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Speaker 2: Anthony Albanezi, and the Liberals to that point suffer the
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Speaker 2: worst election defeat in their history since Mensis formed the party.
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Speaker 2: And this is because the public have lost a sense
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Speaker 2: of what is the Liberal Party, What is the Liberal
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Speaker 2: Party standing for anymore? The public is confused and that
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Speaker 2: confusion is reflected in the magnitude of the twenty twenty
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Speaker 2: two election defeat for the coalition government and the Liberals.
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Speaker 1: But why is it so hard for them? I mean
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Speaker 1: John Howard had shaped the Liberal Party really in his
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Speaker 1: own mold. He brought together, as you say, conservatism and liberalism,
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Speaker 1: the two great traditions, and had kind of thrown in
14:28
Speaker 1: ordinary family values, loyalty to country, patriotism in a kind
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Speaker 1: of low key sort of way, a sense of Australian sovereignty,
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Speaker 1: he would describe all that as just common sense. That's
14:39
Speaker 1: not so hard, is it.
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Speaker 2: This is a really important question and it goes to
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Speaker 2: I think two of the central themes of the book.
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Speaker 2: One is about the challenges facing the country and the
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Speaker 2: other is the quality of leadership. Australia is now facing
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Speaker 2: a new series of challenges that are broader and deeper
15:00
Speaker 2: than those confronted by Bob Hawk or John Howard. Economic
15:05
Speaker 2: management is much tougher. Low productivity, of stagnant living standards,
15:10
Speaker 2: so the economic challenge is more difficult. We've got the
15:15
Speaker 2: energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables, and this is
15:20
Speaker 2: very difficult for Australia given that we were such a
15:23
Speaker 2: powerful and economically competitive fossil fuel economy and the consequences
15:28
Speaker 2: higher energy prices, which creates great difficulties for the government.
15:34
Speaker 2: You've then got social and cultural change, in particular with
15:39
Speaker 2: the rise of identity politics, the nation starts to fracture.
15:43
Speaker 2: There's confusion and a lot of difference about core beliefs
15:48
Speaker 2: in this country, beliefs which were all accepted thirty or
15:52
Speaker 2: forty years ago but aren't any more. In terms of
15:55
Speaker 2: identity politics in relation to race sex and gender. This
16:00
Speaker 2: makes it more difficult to govern. And the conclusion I
16:03
Speaker 2: reach is that successive governments and successive prime ministers lack
16:09
Speaker 2: the capability to really address these challenges. Then you've got
16:14
Speaker 2: the related point about leadership. Tony Abbott was the most
16:19
Speaker 2: conservative leader the Liberal Parties ever had. Malcolm Turnbull was
16:23
Speaker 2: the most progressive leader the Liberal Parties ever had. Scott
16:27
Speaker 2: Morrison was a transactional centrist. All of them had their
16:32
Speaker 2: own strengths. There's no question about that they were diligent
16:36
Speaker 2: prime ministers. But despite their achievements, they were not able
16:40
Speaker 2: to successfully meet the aspirations of the Australian people and
16:45
Speaker 2: not able to successfully meet those challenges that I just outlined.
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Speaker 1: My friends, I can inform you that the government of
16:59
Speaker 1: Australia has changed for just the seventh They swept into power,
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Speaker 1: led by the very effective Tony Abbot in twenty thirteen,
17:10
Speaker 1: and I think there was a sense from most Australians
17:12
Speaker 1: that the revolving door of the Rudd Gillard Rudd years
17:16
Speaker 1: were over, that the embarrassment of having a party that
17:19
Speaker 1: couldn't even hold on to a prime minister was going
17:21
Speaker 1: to stop. And now the adults were in charge. He
17:24
Speaker 1: made two really interesting observations about Abbot. One is the
17:27
Speaker 1: Liberals kind of failed to sell his character as an asset,
17:32
Speaker 1: and the other was that the twenty fourteen budget was
17:35
Speaker 1: a catastrophe that he could never recover from the combination
17:38
Speaker 1: of the Medicare co payment, new harsh restrictions on access
17:42
Speaker 1: to Center Link for example, these were things that he
17:44
Speaker 1: didn't have a mandate for. First, on that question of
17:47
Speaker 1: Abbot's morality and his persona, the sort of triathlete, you know,
17:51
Speaker 1: living at the police headquarters, not living at the lodge,
17:54
Speaker 1: you know, getting up at five am to go to
17:56
Speaker 1: the gym. Why should the Liberals have sold Abbot better?
18:02
Speaker 2: The really interesting thing about Tony Abbot is that he
18:05
Speaker 2: wins big in two thy thirteen. But he's a conservative,
18:11
Speaker 2: and so while the people vote him in, they're not
18:15
Speaker 2: actually voting in the authentic Tony Abbot. They're not voting
18:21
Speaker 2: for Tony Abbot the conservative, They're not actually voting for
18:26
Speaker 2: what he is. So there's a conflict. There's a conflict
18:29
Speaker 2: here between the authentic Abbot as a conservative and where
18:34
Speaker 2: the Australian people are, and the nature of this conflict
18:37
Speaker 2: was concealed by the magnitude of abbots two thousand and
18:41
Speaker 2: thirteen victory. I think the other point to make about Abbot,
18:45
Speaker 2: and a lot of people won't understand this point because
18:48
Speaker 2: Abbot is seen as a really muscular figure, very masculine,
18:54
Speaker 2: very aggressive, very muscular. What I argue is he is
18:59
Speaker 2: the most humble prime minister I've seen since GoF Whitlam.
19:05
Speaker 2: He needed support, he needed Peter Kredlin as his support,
19:10
Speaker 2: and Tony Abbot felt that his victory at the twenty
19:13
Speaker 2: thirteen election was a partnership. It was a partnership victory
19:18
Speaker 2: between himself and Peter Kredlin. Now this is a pretty
19:22
Speaker 2: extraordinary attitude for a prime minister that to have. But
19:26
Speaker 2: this reveals the true nature of Tony Abbot. He's not
19:30
Speaker 2: an ego maniac at all, or a monogynist exactly. He's
19:35
Speaker 2: actually a humble guy who has inner doubts about himself
19:41
Speaker 2: and inner doubts about his real strength. This is the
19:45
Speaker 2: real psychological conundrum about Tony Abbott, the muscular politician who's
19:52
Speaker 2: got doubts about himself.
19:54
Speaker 1: In your view, did he let Joe Hockey kind of
19:57
Speaker 1: run away with a way too conservative agenda? In first
20:00
Speaker 1: budget and kind of blow it all up for himself.
20:03
Speaker 2: I don't think so. The Abbot Hockey relationship is a
20:07
Speaker 2: closer and more intimate relationship than was the relationship between
20:12
Speaker 2: John Howard and Peter Costello as Prime Minister and treasurer.
20:17
Speaker 2: And if Abbot was ever going to get rid of Hockey,
20:20
Speaker 2: it had to be done before the election. There was
20:23
Speaker 2: no way after Tony Abbott came in as Prime Minister
20:27
Speaker 2: and they worked together on that first contentious and highly
20:32
Speaker 2: unpopular budget, that Abbot was going to turn around and
20:36
Speaker 2: sack Hockey. Abbott would have seen that as an act
20:39
Speaker 2: of betrayal, and he would have seen that as putting
20:43
Speaker 2: onto Hockey's responsibility the collective failures of the government, for
20:48
Speaker 2: which Abbot bore a substantial responsibility. When John Howard, among others,
20:56
Speaker 2: advised Abbot to get rid of Hockey and make Turnbuoks Treasurer,
21:01
Speaker 2: Tony Abbot's response was, no way, I'm not going to
21:05
Speaker 2: do that, and don't think this will help the government.
21:07
Speaker 2: It won't help the government at all. And Abbot felt
21:11
Speaker 2: that to make Turnbull Treasurer would be to institute instability
21:16
Speaker 2: at the very apex of the government. It might have
21:20
Speaker 2: assisted the transition to the Turnbull government, but that wasn't
21:24
Speaker 2: in Tony Abbot's interest.
21:26
Speaker 1: You describe Abbot coming into power with three misconceptions about
21:29
Speaker 1: his election victory. One of those was that he would
21:32
Speaker 1: get two terms. Malcolm Turnbull obviously had other ideas. How
21:36
Speaker 1: did Malcolm Turnbull turn out as prime minister in your estimation?
21:40
Speaker 2: Now, the tragedy of the Abbot prime ministership is that
21:44
Speaker 2: in two years, despite a significant parliamentary majority, he lost
21:48
Speaker 2: the confidence of the Parliamentary Party. The party was to
21:53
Speaker 2: a certain extent panicked, It was alarmed by the poles.
21:57
Speaker 2: It was very, very concerned that it might be a
22:01
Speaker 2: once a government, that it might lose the re election contest.
22:06
Speaker 2: And so it went for Malcolm Turnbull on the pragmatic
22:10
Speaker 2: assumption that Turnbull would be a better vote winner than Abbott.
22:15
Speaker 2: Now there was this force aura built up about Malcolm Turnbull.
22:21
Speaker 2: There's no doubt Malcolm Turnbull is a highly intelligent and
22:24
Speaker 2: brilliant man, a great opportunist, an extraordinary record as an investor,
22:31
Speaker 2: as a lawyer, as someone who understood how commerce and
22:36
Speaker 2: finance worked in Australia. But Turnbull was a businessman and
22:41
Speaker 2: an investor. He was not a natural politician. A number
22:46
Speaker 2: of his supporters saw Turnbull as a transformational prime minister.
22:50
Speaker 2: Malcolm was never going to be a transformational prime minister.
22:53
Speaker 2: That wasn't his nature. He was going to be a rationalist,
22:57
Speaker 2: an incrementalist, at reformer, a cautious leader. That he was
23:03
Speaker 2: never going to be a transformation or prime minister. Finally,
23:08
Speaker 2: they got wrong the extent to which he could harness
23:12
Speaker 2: the votes of the Australian people and become an election
23:15
Speaker 2: vote winner. Malcolm Turnbull did win the twenty sixteen election,
23:20
Speaker 2: and in that sense he delivered on the hopes of
23:22
Speaker 2: the party room and kept the coalition in government. But
23:26
Speaker 2: he just got there. He just fell over the line
23:30
Speaker 2: at the twenty sixteen election. He was actually out campaigned
23:34
Speaker 2: by Bill Shorten, no question about that. And what it
23:38
Speaker 2: meant was while Turnbull survived as Prime minister, he was
23:42
Speaker 2: a weakened prime minister and the government was weakened overall.
23:47
Speaker 1: Of course, Paul I read this book wanting to know
23:49
Speaker 1: what you think they should all do now, and I
23:53
Speaker 1: think all of our political parties are a little adrift
23:56
Speaker 1: right now as we see the rise of Pauline Hanson's
23:58
Speaker 1: one nation ebbing and flowing in the polls, a Liberal
24:02
Speaker 1: party that doesn't seem to know which way to turn,
24:04
Speaker 1: at a Prime minister who perhaps thinks that he can
24:07
Speaker 1: just barrel on through with his huge majority.
24:10
Speaker 2: What happens during the decade is there's an effort to
24:14
Speaker 2: rediscover and rekindle conservatism in Australia. It doesn't go well.
24:22
Speaker 2: It doesn't go well at all. Now, what happened at
24:27
Speaker 2: various stages during the past decade was we had a
24:31
Speaker 2: number of people saying the answer has got to be
24:35
Speaker 2: populist conservatism. We've got to look at what's happening in
24:38
Speaker 2: the United States with Donald Trump, what's happening in the
24:41
Speaker 2: United Kingdom with Nigel Farage. We've got to understand that
24:45
Speaker 2: there is a populist conservative revolution running through Western democracies
24:50
Speaker 2: and we've got to take this and apply this revolution
24:55
Speaker 2: to Australia. And so the future for the Coalition in
24:58
Speaker 2: this country will be populist conservatism. I reject this totally.
25:03
Speaker 2: Unlike Britain, we've never had a political party in Australia
25:08
Speaker 2: called the Conservative Party. We've never had a party called
25:12
Speaker 2: the Tory Party. Why is that? Well, There's a very
25:16
Speaker 2: simple reason for this, and the reason is since seventeen
25:20
Speaker 2: eighty eight and the arrival of Europeans in Australia, there
25:24
Speaker 2: have been three great political traditions in this country liberalism,
25:29
Speaker 2: socialism and conservatism. But the weakest of the three has
25:35
Speaker 2: been conservatism, and often in Australian history conservatism was seen
25:41
Speaker 2: as a term of abuse. One of the great lessons
25:45
Speaker 2: for the coalition side of politics is they've got to
25:48
Speaker 2: keep working on these two traditions, liberalism and conservatism. And
25:53
Speaker 2: the idea that the solution is populist conservatism is a myth.
25:59
Speaker 2: It's been disproved by that decade.
26:02
Speaker 1: You describe Donald Trump as a false prophet and make
26:06
Speaker 1: the point that he was not a conservative, but in
26:09
Speaker 1: fact he kind of blew up the Republican Party and
26:11
Speaker 1: everything that it stood for in terms of conservative values
26:14
Speaker 1: in America. He did get elected twice, though, and that's
26:18
Speaker 1: something that liberals are struggling with.
26:20
Speaker 2: He did get elected twice. He's a remarkable populist politician,
26:25
Speaker 2: but he's not a conservative. And the point I make
26:28
Speaker 2: is that we don't have a presidential system in this country.
26:31
Speaker 2: We have a Westminster system. There will be no Trump
26:35
Speaker 2: in this country because the people don't elect the prime minister.
26:39
Speaker 2: The parliamentary parties elect the prime minister. I think this
26:43
Speaker 2: is a far superior system to that of the United States.
26:47
Speaker 2: America's political culture is very, very different to Australias, and
26:52
Speaker 2: I think this is widely recognized now. Clearly that I
26:57
Speaker 2: argue in the epilogue, written after the twenty twenty five election,
27:01
Speaker 2: the Liberal Party and the coalition in this country now
27:04
Speaker 2: it faces an existential crisis. The fundamental requirement for the
27:09
Speaker 2: party is to articulate and get behind with a sense
27:14
Speaker 2: of unity, what its beliefs are in the current decade,
27:19
Speaker 2: in this contemporary period of Australian history. The party's got
27:23
Speaker 2: to move on. It's got to go back and look
27:26
Speaker 2: at its traditions, but it's got to update those traditions
27:30
Speaker 2: with fresh policies, and that's going to be a very
27:33
Speaker 2: difficult challenge.
27:34
Speaker 1: I'm sure they will be rushing out to buy this
27:36
Speaker 1: book to give them some clues. Paul, thank you very much,
27:38
Speaker 1: and thanks for writing it, and thanks for being with us.
27:41
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for the interview, Claire. I've appreciated
27:43
Speaker 2: very much.
27:50
Speaker 1: Paul Kelly is the Australian's editor at large and the
27:52
Speaker 1: author of the Twilight of Exceptionalism. It'll be launched this
27:56
Speaker 1: Friday by John Howard. There'll be extracts in the this
28:00
Speaker 1: weekend and it'll be in bookstores on July fourteenth. You
28:04
Speaker 1: can check out all our journalism anytime at the Australian
28:08
Speaker 1: dot com dot au