Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / PETER GARRETT: Rockstar Politician

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PETER GARRETT: Rockstar Politician · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Get a humans welcome in the safe space for dangerous ideas and today a true living legend
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  for more than a half a century Peter Garrett has occupied the consciousness of Australians
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  and many people around the world. You may know him from this little number.
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  That's right he's the lead singer of Midnight Oil, one of the most iconic bands in Australian
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  history but he's not just that. He is also an environmentalist and a politician and an activist
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  at the same time as he was a superstar in Australia for his music career. He became the head
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  of the Australian Conservation Foundation, one of the country's biggest environmental groups
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  and then went into politics with all of the compromises and difficulties that that might
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  entail. He became the minister for the environment. He went on to be minister for education
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  in the Australian government. He spearheaded the campaign against Japanese wailing in the southern
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  ocean which ended that particular practice. An incredible person with a lot of incredible
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  thoughts about all of the biggest issues that face us from climate chaos to the way that we
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  live our lives, energy independence and the rise of China. His new solo album is called The True
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  North. It's with his band The Ulta Egos. It drops on March 15th. He'll be touring Australia
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  in March. Please enjoy the one and only living legend Peter Garis.
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  I like the part of the fact that when I was in high school I went on holiday to New York
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  and my idol at the time was David Letterman and I got tickets six months in advance to go to get
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  I was ticket number one for that night. This was at the peak of Letterman's like prowess mid to late
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  90s and you were the act. We did it a lot of few times. It would have been probably the maybe
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  night 96 or something. Yeah, no, that'd be right. Do you remember the first time going on Letterman?
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  Totally. You know I remember. Why? Because we said to somebody, oh, we're going on Letterman
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  like we met some other band somewhere and they said, oh, make sure you take your thermals.
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  We were what? Explain that for people who don't know. So we used to have the air conditioning on
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  so yeah, so cold. So no one would fall asleep because you don't want people to fall asleep. He had
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  a theory about comedy that it was you know that you're more if you're freezing cold. You're kind of
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  more likely to pay attention. You're more likely to laugh. You're more jittery. You're more
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  all of the above. Yeah, but I also think it was the fact that like it's Manhattan and New Yorkers
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  have had a big day. You know, they're battling it out of Manhattan. They've worked. They've
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  queued up. Then they're sitting there. That's a very literal interpretation perhaps. So I mean,
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  they're all tourists though. They're all people. They're all people. They're all in Idaho. They're
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  all in York. They're a few potato farmers there. Do you remember and was that a weird surreal
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  experience for you going on the huge American shows or did you not really understand that
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  why that whole thing was big? Oh, no, no, no, we understood. I mean, we'd been touring. We too
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  the States early, but we weren't a mainstream band, but of course, so at night, if we had a night
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  off, you watch Telly. Yeah. And so we would watch Carson and Letterman and Jay Leno and whoever.
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  Yeah. And you realize it's a part of it's a part of the zeitgeist. Absolutely. And it's the
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  water cooler discussions in the morning who was on the night before and so on. So I think the
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  record company was amazed that they get actually get us on, you know, more than why could you get
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  on at that stage? I mean, I guess you, well, by the mid 90s, you were a big actor. Yeah. No,
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  no, we would we could get on because we were a big actor. We played a lot in a way that I think
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  for us was quite natural. It was like we we replaced the pub circuit here with the college
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  theater, Nettelander circuit there. We didn't really think twice about it. We just thought,
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  oh, that's what you do. You play every night. It was going like you're driving from, you know,
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  Nebraska to New Orleans to play the next night. It's a little bit long, but we're in a bus.
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  It's okay. We're sure like being a stand-up comic or something isn't it? Toad road. Yeah.
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  But we used to do it and we used to drive ourselves and do it all that way. So I mean, for me,
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  there's a maybe it's just because I was a fan of the late night genre, but there was a there's a
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  big leap in status between being a touring band and being on Letterman. And I wonder if there
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  was ever a moment where you were sitting in the green room for the first time or something that you
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  can recall going, fuck, I think we've made it. Not so much like that, Josh. I think it was more
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  wow Saturday night, like Friday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, Letterman, so ubiquitous.
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  And who did he have on the night that we played, you know, Bill Clinton? Yeah, what exactly?
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  I don't even remember. Well, I remember. You know, help a Chino or, you know, Lady Gaga. Yeah.
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  So yeah, you're all sitting around with them. No, it was a strange thing. Our late departed
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  dear Kiwi bass player, Bernsey Hillman was actually a really very naturally, very funny man.
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  And Letterman came and stuck his head in the first night that we were there and made some wisecrack.
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  And Berns just started wisecracking with him. What did you say? And he became affectionate towards
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  us. He called us the Bushman. Yes. Yeah, I remember that. There are wild Bushmen.
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  Yeah, the wild on your hats. So sit down there. There are a bunch of Australian Bushmen.
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  Kangaroo in our back pocket. Yeah, a big pull hug enough. That's right. Exactly.
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  So congratulations on the new album. The point of like the main single you've released
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  is that it's never too late to save the world. Totally. Is that a is that a sentiment that comes
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  naturally to you or is that something that you have to think yourself into in spite of yourself?
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  No, I think it's part of my my genuine DNA. You know, I quite often believe and have found that
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  you know, the 11th hour is quite often the most important minute. You're back to the world.
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  Oh, we had nothing to go for at the moment. On some things we're probably getting close. Yeah.
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  One of those climate and probably international peace and love with nukes.
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  There's a bumper sticker for you. Peace and love with nukes. I feel like we've been at the
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  11th hour on climate for quite a while. And you hear climate skeptics say, look, for 20 years,
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  we've been told that, you know, we've only got 12 minutes left and you know, the clock's
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  approaching midnight. But where is this catastrophe that keeps being prognosticated? How do you think
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  of the timeline? Well, of course, the thing you say back to a skeptic is, have you watched
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  the news lately? You know, it's pretty evident. Well, the timeline, so I'm not a catastrophist,
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  but I'm very familiar with the science and it's made a big part of my working life, particularly
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  when I was in politics, but even other parts of my life. And the idea that we could stabilize
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  climate will be an idea that will grow stronger over time, not weaker, as more and more people
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  realize what's a stake. And as we suffer more, you know, climate events. So the question is,
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  what kind of world has it become? The more you delay action. And eventually you end up with a
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  world that's pretty awful and very difficult. Are we guaranteed to have that world, though, given
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  the lag between the emissions that we're letting out now and the impact that they have, isn't
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  they're like a 20 year late? Aren't we like sort of experiencing the effects now of the
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  emissions that were being released 10, 15, 20 years ago? And we've already baked in
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  increasing catastrophe. We're baked in around 1.5 degrees increase in global average temperatures.
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  If we completely cut everything right now. Correct. That's why they set in the international
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  negotiations. There's 1.5 degree thing which people might have heard of. It's like,
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  scientists say we need to hold it about 1.5. We're pretty close to it because of what we've done
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  already, or absolutely right. Now, how do we sort of keep it there? Well, there's a couple of
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  things we have to do. One thing is you've got to stop burning fossil fuels straight away.
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  Transform the energy system into renewables. And make sure that you don't add any short-term
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  sort of kicks into the system. And the obvious one is methane, which is a short-term gas,
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  comes when you actually exploit natural gas, when cows. But it's very hot.
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  Someone said it's burping, actually. Someone said the fart thing.
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  It's both ends. Yeah, but yeah, burping more.
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  And then you've got to look at ways of actually pulling some of the already stored
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  CO2 in the atmosphere out and storing it. And that's quite a big question.
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  Those three things need to happen pretty urgently. You back that latter one.
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  I'm skeptical about it. I think it can be used as a mechanism for delay.
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  Yeah, I mean, I spoken to some environmentalists who are skeptical about the whole field of what
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  might be called geoengineering, where you're trying to use science and technology to mitigate the
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  effects of emissions, like by either drawing it out of the atmosphere. Some people talk about
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  seeding the atmosphere with water vapor or something to reflect sunlight back,
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  where you put giant mirrors into orbit and reflect sunlight, all that kind of stuff.
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  A parasol over the great berry reef.
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  Isn't that conceivable that you get to a point at which that's the least bad option?
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  Most of these options that you've mentioned are just totally fanciful,
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  and they're just basically... What if they weren't?
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  Because some scientists say they're not. Well, like you know, volcano erupts,
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  and you do see a decline in global temperatures for a couple of years when there's a huge volcanic
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  eruption, because of all the sulfur in the atmosphere reflects a little bit of sunlight back into space.
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  So I think the short answer without boring your listens to death.
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  Yes, you've got to do a proper cost-benefit analysis of what is being proposed,
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  and judge it's affecting us against other measures.
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  So, you know, the idea that you could sort of try something which would alter the natural rhythms,
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  so for example, climate patterns and weather and so on and so forth,
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  by just randomly trying something a little bit like introducing rabbits to Australia,
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  but on a global scale with much potentially far-reaching and unknown consequences.
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  If you're looking at something which has got material scientific validity, but they just haven't
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  figured out a way of doing it yet, say, for example, like bearing CO2, well, then there may be some
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  prospects for it. But by far the easiest thing to do is use available good solar, wind, energy
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  efficiency, you know, to the stuff that's there. We can do it already. We don't have to think about
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  these things. But what if we do all of that? And still, you know, I mean, I can imagine a scenario
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  in which we do all that and still a big country like China experiences enough droughts and extreme
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  weather events that it goes stuff this we're just going to try. They may, they may, but I think it's
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  pretty clear from all the work that's been done internationally and all the scientists tell us
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  and countries that are serious about it, particularly the European countries, is that there is a pathway
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  to stabilising climate, but it does require, it's not about technical, it's about political,
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  it's about having the will, the will to act. When you say it's not about technical, what about
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  the advances that have been made technologically? I mean, you can, we can have a whole argument
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  about fracking and the upsides and downsides of that. But I mean, America is reducing, is reducing
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  its carbon emissions, thanks to pivoting to natural gas from oil. You know, you've got things like
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  Tesla and the electric car boom and a lot of people do feel like technology will ultimately get us
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  out of this without the heavy hand of government. Are they naive? Utterly. And in fact, I mean,
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  fracking's not getting us out of anything, it's just getting us into more trouble because you get a
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  lot of methane with fracking, you get a lot of leakage and the potential impact on groundwater,
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  you know, aquifers below ground, water systems and supplies and so forth levels massive and fracking
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  has completely trashed and destroyed parts of the US already. It's a shocking industry actually
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  and I really hope that we don't do too much of it here. The sort of arguments and discussions
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  that we're having Josh about it are fascinating in a way because what it really says underneath
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  is there's enough wordage and thinking around the place that essentially refuses to accept
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  that we can't continue as business as usual and expecting a technological fix per se to get us
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  out of trouble but that we actually have to do a bigger change. And the part of the bigger change
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  which is pretty straightforward is not that big, it's just saying to coal companies and oil companies,
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  your business model is damaging the planet and you now can no longer do it and guess what,
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  we've got other ways of making cars drive along a road and we've got other ways of providing
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  the power for us when we turn on our lights. Let's start using it. Right, but the biggest sort of
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  advance in encouraging people to understand that we've got other ways of driving cars along the
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  road was a private individual who had a vision of making electric cars cool instead of dorky and
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  went ahead and did it even in the absence of government action. Well, he's a dangerous individual
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  who's managed to do one good bit of technology. By the way, do not forget that the Obama
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  administration provided Tesla with a great deal of government support in its early course. I mean,
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  a great deal of support for all car manufacturers including petrol car manufacturers. Nothing happens
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  without the hand of government, sure, hopefully the right way. Yeah, but they weren't putting
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  their fingers on the scales of electric cars. No, they weren't. No, that's no subsidising
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  the industry. Yeah, well, they were enthralled to stand a motor industry thing on it, but
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  no, you need to have a mix of both things. You need to harness and utilise the best of innovation
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  and the best what the best and the brightest can do and you need to provide a really solid robust
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  and a pretty stable environment in terms of laws and regulations to make it happen.
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  And if you look at countries, I mean, look at South Australia. I mean, it's a great example.
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  You know, there are many days in South Australia now where they actually run the whole of the
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  state on solar panels. Now that happened because the South Australian government enacted a certain
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  number of legislations and regulations to make that happen. And voila, it happens. Now they're not
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  building the solar panels. It's not the government that's installing them on people's roofs. It's
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  not the government's coming up with the new solar panels, but they're just saying, hey,
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  solar panels can work his way that they can. And of course, once a government does that,
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  it can happen easily. Speaking of Elon Musk, did I detect a jab at him?
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  As a lyrid. There's a lyrid where about taking selfies from out of space in the song, and I
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  thought about Elon and Bezos and Branson and the techno utopian infatuation with colonising space.
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  What do you make of that phenomenon at the moment? What's going on there?
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  You know, well, there's two things for me that really make me sort of reach for the vomit bucket.
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  One is this idea that sort of these sort of mini-egos, which are really people who have done very
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  well in business. They're not so many. They've done well in business. Figure that one way of
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  manifesting this idea that I am a unique great person, I'm intrepid, I'm adventurous, I'm whatever,
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  is to spend oodles and oodles and produce lots of pollution to go do something as utterly futile
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  and meaningless as to try and colonise a planet elsewhere. Whilst at the same time, obvious
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  comment, of course, but it's plenty of good things that they could be doing with their money here.
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  The second thing, though, which for me is even more important, is that most of these techno utopians
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  and the libertarian strain amongst many of the people from Silicon Valley and musk and others
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  is actually fundamentally anti-democratic. They, but don't believe that governments can do anything
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  particularly well. They're like government to get the hell out of their lives. They're not committed
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  to the idea of a common good and there's no social contract with them and the rest of the world,
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  whether it's their workers, their customers maybe, but certainly not the rest of the world in terms
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  of how they see things. They're quite attracted to what I think extreme and dangerous philosophies
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  and an integral in a way to the development that we've had over the last couple of hundred years,
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  which for better or for worse has gotten to its top point where we actually think we need to
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  treat one another equally irrespective of our genders, our race, our biases. And we need to
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  provide for people who aren't able to do as well as they could otherwise. So these guys are a danger
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  and you might watch them support Trump, for example. I mean Peter Thiel, who's one of those people,
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  as you would know, I think it's trying a bit of money. He's one of the founders of PayPal.
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  Yeah. All of that. Huge libertarian force in Silicon Valley. Yeah. For me, there's a really
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  interesting question here and the question is, are we going to take what I would loosely describe
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  as the European model or the American model as they've evolved? The European model recognizes
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  that in order to survive and to flourish, we have to cooperate. The American model says
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  believes in order to survive and flourish, we need to give full reign to individual liberties,
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  to let the great people, the smart people, the powerful business people have their way. I happen
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  to believe that the European model is a better one. Now, I'm not talking about China and the
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  rise of India and all that at the moment, but I think those two philosophies sort of essentially
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  underpin what's happening in the world, particularly around climate, a very good example.
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  And as ever, there are some elements in what people do that you can grab and say,
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  how that's good. Put six really bright young men and women in a place and pay them 50,000 bucks
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  a month and say, come up with a great idea to do X. Totally. There's no question. Funny that you
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  use the word X because X is sort of Elon's. I do know what to do. But yeah, that's interesting
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  because the way that they would say, when you say that they're meaning those sort of
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  techno utopian libertarians in Silicon Valley, that their attitude is anti-democratic,
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  they would say, that's a very socialist point of view about what democracy is because you've got
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  this sort of faith in the state as being the locus of the demos, right? And they would say,
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  unleash the power of the individual and human beings will all in an atom smithy and sort of way,
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  you know, get along and help each other, you know, respect the autonomy of the individual. And that
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  that's for the fundamental kind of unit of democracy, right? Is the individual rather than
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  the collective action? And they might even concede that there are collective action problems
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  like climate that require that the market isn't going to fix on its own and will need guidance
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  like a carbon tax or, you know, emissions trading scheme or something like that. But they would say that
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  the closer you can leave the center of action to the individual on the market, the better result
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  you're going to get. What do you say to that? Well, that's not all I say. Part of it, I agree
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  with. I think we should have, I mean, that's probably not what Peter said, I would say. No,
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  it's probably what Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg would say. So I think they're fundamentally wrong.
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  And I think they're fundamentally dangerous ultimately. On the question of giving people the
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  freedom to, you know, innovate and to explore and to develop new ideas and so on and so forth,
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  no argument from me, you know, and neither should there be from anyone. But on the argument that
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  government's got no business in my life, complete argument from me. I mean, what happens to these
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  people when the sea level rise in Florida starts running over their walls? Like, I mean, they can't
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  gate, they can't produce a gated community that's going to stop a climate crisis. Elon money probably
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  can. No, seriously, don't think he can. And I mean, some of them go and build these massive underground
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  bunkers, you know, on the south island of New Zealand. It is fatuous. It is, it'll be seen as a
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  sign of utterly dislodged insanity at a later point in time. People look back and they'll go,
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  what the hell? But the other part of it is pretty straightforward. They don't want to pay taxes.
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  They believe that they can create their own utopian vision by what rules under what levels of
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  accountability. How are they employing people? You know, how would it work? And the truth of it
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  is that they haven't thought that through. They haven't been able to get one of their single,
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  funny little, you know, cosmic islands or everybody in a bubbling and Arizona or whatever. And they
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  never will. Well, that's the truth of it. They never will. What they may get is a very autocratic
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  government, you know, a figure like a Trumpian figure or whatever who says, hey, I recognize what
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  you guys are doing. And I'm very supportive. But by the way, I'm going to lock up people that
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  disagree with me and put them in jail. You know, they're a really basic fundamental. They're under
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  challenge. There's no question by this. But what do you think they would do that when I mean part
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  of the problem with Elon Musk at the moment is that he's come blundering into Twitter and has sort
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  of removed their content moderation in a way that allows a cacophony of free speech that's letting
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  you know, hate speech, flouration, so on. I mean, his instinct strikes me as being anti-authoritarian,
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  isn't it? I mean, isn't there's a lot of libertarians? Bened a lot of ties. I don't spend, I mean,
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  you know, I've noticed my Twitter decline currently horrible. Yeah, just really awful. But I've
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  spent a lot of time actually following him around. He doesn't, you know, he's not reading my bells
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  really to be blunt. Right, right. And when you said an interesting thing about like, you know, Peter
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  teals a New Zealand bunker and, you know, how future generations will regard this as being
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  totally bonkers, you didn't qualify future generations by saying if we're all still around
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  in a few centuries. Well, I think, look, you're optimistic. Humans are ultimately highly adaptable
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  where very communicative species, with master technologies, we can make choices, including moral
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  and political and social choices. So there's nothing to say that we can't be around. It's just that
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  we need to break some very bad habits and get active on other things to ensure that the what we're
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  around to is palatable. And at the moment, it probably isn't. In terms of the transition
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  away from fossil fuels, you mentioned solar and wind. You didn't mention nuclear to no go.
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  It is for me. And I think it ultimately will be even these so-called small reactors that are being
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  talked up by the industry now. I mean, we've got to, if we sit back and look at it, what is the
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  objection to having an energy system where individuals, communities and countries draw on their
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  natural, renewable and non-harmful energy sources to create energies, to support themselves,
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  like in Iceland. The objection would be there's nothing wrong with that in the long term,
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  but in the short term, the climate crisis is severe enough that we can't get the pivot done
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  quickly enough without some interim technologies. Utterly reject nuclear as being the answer to
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  that and clearly isn't for a couple of reasons. The first is that we don't have to wait. I mean,
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  if Germany can sort of get its solar penetration up around the 40-50 percent in a country that
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  suffers along winter, then there's many, many, many countries around the world that can do it equally
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  well. The renewable technologies are there and the cost nut on renewable, particularly on
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  solar has come down. It's just a matter, again, it's just a matter of doing it. It's a matter of
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  will. But there's another point with nuclear and it's very simple. Who bears the cost
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  ultimately of having to still manage and store high-level radioactive waste, weapons-grade
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  waste waste that hangs around for tens of thousands if not more years? Who bears that responsibility?
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  And ultimately, insurance companies won't bear it. Communities quite rightly don't want to bear it.
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  But if you are going to have it, someone has to bear their cost and take that responsibility.
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  And that is a far, far greater cost and responsibility that I think pretty much most countries
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  are going to take, with the exception of a few... Sorry, I mean, the cost of the risk of a disaster
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  or the cost of maintaining nuclear waste over tens of thousands of years? Well, it's both,
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  but it's the latter in particular. Because why don't governments do that? I mean, we store
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  other people's nuclear waste in Australia, don't we? Not more at least we talk about it.
• 24:00
  We talk about it. No, no, no. We're very, very little and all low-level moment. But what is a
• 24:06
  government, Josh, when you boil it down? I mean, you might say at the moment a government is Anthony
• 24:10
  Albanese here and, you know, someone in another country, but basically governments are people.
• 24:15
  I mean, we are the government ultimately and we would be the ones bearing the cost. That is not fair.
• 24:20
  Not equitable and actually not safe. Right. I mean, some of the quote-unquote environmentalist
• 24:27
  pro-nuclear people say that you're going to need base load power. You know, you need something,
• 24:33
  you know, we need either need really, really good batteries or like some of the storage mechanism
• 24:39
  like, you know, your pump water up to dams on the top of mountains and stuff like that so that it can
• 24:43
  flow down. But when the wind's not blowing and the sun's not shining, you've got to have some
• 24:48
  stopgap and that that stopgap is currently coal and it might as well be nuclear for the next 20 to
• 24:54
  40 years until battery technology gets going off. Yeah. Look again, it's a rubbish argument. I mean,
• 24:59
  it takes you between 20 and 40 years to get one up and the one they tried to get up in America
• 25:03
  fell over because it was too expensive. I can't get through the regulatory hurdles. If someone wants
• 25:08
  to green light it over time, then you're going to end up with something which has the potential
• 25:13
  to actually not work properly. And then you're leaking radioactive material into the atmosphere
• 25:18
  and you're going to go look at Fukushima to see what happens when that does take place.
• 25:22
  But the other part of it is that I've heard these arguments for ever in a day and
• 25:27
  these arguments don't take into account the fact that if we manage our own energy consumption
• 25:34
  consciously in any country and any suburb and in any street, then the fact that we have to
• 25:40
  use energy carefully at different times is something which we can build into our cultural
• 25:45
  matrix very, very easy. Right. And if we add smart grids, all of that, if you're turned on your,
• 25:50
  if you try to turn on your washing machine and it said do you want to save 50% by turning
• 25:54
  myself on it to A.M. instead of it? All of that. I was in a government that did some of that,
• 25:59
  you know. And then another lot got in and tried to get rid of it all. But people liked it.
• 26:06
  People responded to it and why wouldn't you? You're actually being empowered. You're not some
• 26:11
  just person getting a bill and thinking what the hell, you're actually actively involved.
• 26:15
  And second thing to say is that we haven't discussed a bunch of other things here.
• 26:19
  Other than behavioral change, we haven't looked at energy efficiency seriously at all.
• 26:23
  I mean, when I drive over the Harbour Bridge and I look over my shoulder and I see 90% of the
• 26:30
  buildings at nine and ten o'clock at night still blazing away with their lawns on, I know that we
• 26:36
  haven't actually gotten on top of how we can actually conserve energy. Absolutely.
• 26:39
  Yeah. I mean, not to mention the way that we build buildings here, anyone who's lived in a
• 26:43
  cold climate, for example, lived in New York for a dozen years and came back here and moved into
• 26:48
  a place and you'd turn that you'd blast the heater on and you could literally, I was living in an
• 26:52
  old, you know, weatherboard house in Belmaine and you could see a gap between the floor and the
• 26:59
  wallboards where the hot air was just escaping. There's no idea of having double glazing or any of
• 27:04
  that or insulation. No, look, there's one final thing to say, which I mean, when I first started
• 27:10
  getting involved in activism and the odds were going out and playing with greenpeace and what have you?
• 27:14
  People used to say, there is a reason why we've got pollution. It's a reason why these things
• 27:19
  are difficult because over here you've got power companies who are selling us a product,
• 27:25
  but we can actually probably get hold of that product more cheaply and control it ourselves.
• 27:30
  And I think the time I thought was a slightly simple analysis of things, but I've actually come
• 27:34
  to believe it's really true. And my reason for that is very straightforward. Why is it that we still
• 27:40
  permit a wood side or a sand toss or a BHP or a shell to do something which is arguably way more
• 27:49
  dangerous to us than what the tobacco companies were doing 10 or 15 or 20 years ago, when they
• 27:55
  themselves already have the research that shows what the damage will be, what happens when we
• 28:01
  are in the middle of a climate crisis, whether it's bushfires or a flood or an intense cyclone or
• 28:05
  whatever, and that their business model is predicated on doing that for as long as they can
• 28:12
  until it's stopped. Now we just need the courage to say, you've gone too far already,
• 28:16
  did you not going any further? And guess what? In Australia, we've got one of the biggest
• 28:21
  uptake of solar panels on people's roofs, people get it, and they're very happy to generate
• 28:26
  their own power and save money. We have the government incentives to do it. I mean,
• 28:29
  in places like the States, it's just a lot harder to do that sort of thing. You need to jump
• 28:34
  through a lot more legislative hoops and regulations. It's more expensive. You don't get the same
• 28:37
  rebates and so on. How much of it is up to us as individuals and how much of it is a collective
• 28:43
  problem? Like I feel bad about the fact that I fly a lot. You probably fly a lot, right?
• 28:48
  I'm trying to fly less. I mean, it sounds a bit lame, but no, I really, I agree.
• 28:51
  Have you ever flown private? You mean in my own planes? No, in someone's plane that was not a
• 28:58
  commercial flight. Many, many years ago, I flew from Sydney to Kummer, I think, with Dick Pratt,
• 29:07
  the Vizzi engine director. We've tried to talk to me and to stop shopping down.
• 29:11
  Very rich Australian, his industry was Boxers. Boxers and Forests, and we were trying to get them
• 29:17
  out of native forest logging. Actually, they did get out of native forest logging. So I've done that.
• 29:21
  And in government, I've been on, of course, government, the VIP clients. But no, otherwise,
• 29:26
  now Air Force One type things. I've had a little bit less, less glam. And I usually reject
• 29:34
  criticisms of it because I just don't see a pathway to wrestling with a problem as large as
• 29:40
  climate chaos simply by me trying to be nice. You've got to lift your game,
• 29:48
  a lot, certainly cast eyes. As do I. So look, I think in broad terms, this is something we,
• 29:56
  a lot of people wrestle with. And I certainly have wrestled with it over the years. So I think
• 30:01
  it's a new art discussion. It's not a simplistic black and white discussion in one way. It's
• 30:05
  simplistic in another. We need to do whatever we can to reduce our emissions. And we need to argue
• 30:11
  very strongly and try and persuade the powerful entities in our world, the political parties,
• 30:18
  superannuation funds, banks, the media, whatever, that this is very, very dear to us and important.
• 30:23
  Having done that, we need to look into our life and to see what we can actually do
• 30:27
  whilst they're getting their act together to set the proper regulations in place to make the
• 30:31
  rules to penalise the polluters to reward the innovators. But there's stuff I'm sure I can do.
• 30:37
  Okay, let's put the do it. No, it was not going to be changed by stuff that Peter Garrett, I mean,
• 30:41
  it may be because of Peter Garrett, it does it through his heart or through his politics. No,
• 30:44
  no, not as an individual human being. Absolutely. We all know what's going to happen. There's going to
• 30:48
  have to be laws about energy efficiency. There's going to have to be an international compact that
• 30:52
  puts a price on carbon one way or another for everybody. And that'll fix the problem and
• 30:58
  incentives for technology. Yeah, but look, the points were made, but the point isn't well made
• 31:04
  to say that Peter Garrett or any individual drop steps by themselves do or don't make a difference
• 31:08
  because of course they do because it's not me sitting in a football field with 95,000 other people
• 31:14
  around me doing something completely different. It's me and potentially 30, 40, 50, 60 and eventually
• 31:20
  maybe persuading 80 or 50, 90,000 people to do the same thing. And once people act in that way,
• 31:25
  I mean, sure, they're doing it themselves, but they're not an isolated entity and they're not
• 31:30
  to speak on the landscape where everything else is different. But with all sorts of other people
• 31:34
  like that, if they make the same decision, you get the same result. So this short answer is you
• 31:37
  need both. You very much need both. You need to be doing whatever you can within reason that you
• 31:45
  can manage in your life, you know, going to sort of hurt someone else to do that. And you need to
• 31:51
  push hard on your politics. And on travel, you know, do I want to go to the Antarctic and have a
• 31:57
  good look at it and what I love to have a bucket list of places I'm going to fly to here and there.
• 32:01
  I'd love to, but I'm reaching the point where I don't think I can justify it. I'm lucky enough
• 32:06
  to have traveled a lot more so it's been for work. Would I travel for work? Yes, I would because
• 32:11
  there's probably no other way I can easily do the work where employing people and so on and so forth.
• 32:14
  I mean, there are lines and nuances in there. You can argue at any which way. I totally get that.
• 32:20
  Air travel, though, is going to be an issue for us in another way, which is up to this point in time.
• 32:26
  We've taken for granted, and I'm one of those people now. I'm that generation. I'm a boomer
• 32:31
  that, hey, I can jump on a plane pretty much whenever I want to go wherever I want.
• 32:35
  And there's more and more travel than there's ever been before. It was cheaper up until COVID than
• 32:40
  it's ever been before, but it's not included in the climate negotiations, the protocols, the cops,
• 32:46
  the Paris agreements, the data, because most of these airlines are owned by governments who sort of
• 32:52
  don't want to go there because they don't want to say to people. Well, actually, your tickets are
• 32:56
  going to cost twice as much and we're now waiting for, you know, the new sustainable Richard Branson
• 33:00
  plane to glide in and land or whatever it might be. So I think air travel is heading into a really
• 33:06
  difficult and let's just say bumpy ride. I had a really interesting tour around a NASA facility
• 33:13
  in the States when I was working on an energy show in America and I was a correspondent looking
• 33:19
  at renewable energy and stuff. And they've got to lab where they're testing
• 33:25
  algae's. Right. And the algae is produces a biofuel. The biofuel fuels the plane.
• 33:31
  Correct. And although the plane is still producing emissions, they call it closing the carbon loop
• 33:37
  where the plane produces the emissions. The emissions get absorbed by the algae. The algae
• 33:41
  becomes the fuel, the fuel. And so this was their sort of sunny polyanna optimistic way of saying,
• 33:46
  don't worry, we can keep flying as much as we want to. Yeah. Well, just as long as we make
• 33:50
  sure that, you know, we're soaking up the carbon that we're putting out. So who knows,
• 33:53
  who knows whether that's going to work? Why did you go into politics then? So you started in the
• 33:57
  Euclid disarmament party, which was a tiny, you know, party that didn't really go anywhere.
• 34:04
  I got a sender in the parliament. I got a sender. And then you went mainstream. I mean,
• 34:08
  then did you get headhunted specifically? Was it during the late, was it when Mark Latham was
• 34:13
  correct? Yeah, it was when Latham was leading. Yeah. It came and said, would I be interested?
• 34:18
  And what was your initial instinct? Well, I finished up, I'd come off the road and, you know,
• 34:22
  I was the president of the Australian Conservation Foundation for a couple of terms.
• 34:26
  Yeah. I was just finishing that term. That's a big environmental group here. It's a big
• 34:29
  environment for our listeners. Yeah. And I was spending quite a bit of time in Canberra,
• 34:35
  and I'd worked with governments, both persuasions, but probably more closely with Labor.
• 34:40
  And I'd seen what happens when an environment minister decides to do A or B. I'd spent a
• 34:45
  lot of time in there persuading them to do things. And I thought, well, if there's an opportunity
• 34:49
  to take that role, then I'll do it. And look, I've been a long-term student of politics.
• 34:54
  So I wasn't there. There's a picture that exists from an external picture of what politics is.
• 35:01
  It's been unfortunately confirmed by the ABC's latest sort of, you know,
• 35:06
  drivel on nemesis, but the truth of it is that it's a very multi-faceted, complex,
• 35:12
  and sometimes grindingly boring exercise and trying to make things work better.
• 35:18
  And I was very happy to go and try and be a part of that if I got the chance. So I lay them
• 35:21
  and a few others, John Faulkner and a few other Labour elders had said, look, you know,
• 35:27
  are you interested in coming? Would like you to be a part of it.
• 35:30
  So how did they do that? Did they come and visit you? Or did they shoot you an email?
• 35:35
  Well, I knew them anyway before hand, so we just had to socialise.
• 35:38
  You were socialising.
• 35:40
  I'm not so much socialising, but in touch.
• 35:43
  Right. So I mean, I was in the lobbyist, essentially.
• 35:47
  Yes, of course. I spend, say, you'd be in the room with them anyway.
• 35:49
  I see. I've seen the capacity as the head of this environment.
• 35:53
  Yeah, that's right. I mean, I'm spending, like, weeks in Canberra,
• 35:56
  knocking on people's doors.
• 35:57
  And was there a point at which Mark Latham, who was the leader of the opposition
• 36:00
  Labour Party at the time, you know, turned to you and said, we could really use you in
• 36:04
  Yes. In government, if we win. Yep.
• 36:07
  Did you have to think about it? No.
• 36:11
  So then they win power, but Mark Latham is no longer the labour leader.
• 36:15
  Canberra has come swooping in. It was a historic election.
• 36:18
  Well, actually, there was, sorry, there was,
• 36:20
  Kim was poor old Kim, poor old Kim.
• 36:23
  Oh, no, Kim Beasley was briefly the opposite leader.
• 36:26
  Yes, he was. Yeah.
• 36:27
  Who is an incredibly accomplished Australian?
• 36:29
  Absolutely.
• 36:30
  I mean, I mean, I mean, I have nothing but massive respect for Kim Beasley,
• 36:34
  former Defence Minister, is that right?
• 36:36
  And, you know, hugely accomplished.
• 36:38
  But was not, did not prove to be the, the opposition leader who would lead
• 36:42
  Labour to government.
• 36:43
  Kevin Rudd was, there was a landmark win in 2007 for people who don't remember
• 36:49
  or who aren't Australian, Australia had had a centre-right
• 36:52
  Conservative Government really for a long time, well over a decade,
• 36:56
  with the second longest-serving Prime Minister in Australia's history.
• 36:59
  And Kevin Rudd was a very slick, you know, good marketing,
• 37:04
  you know, good, good talk, good at talking on TV.
• 37:06
  Kevin O7.
• 37:07
  Kevin O7 was the slogan.
• 37:08
  It was very, it was a sort of almost Obama-esque kind of moment in Australian politics.
• 37:13
  We finally apologise to the Indigenous population.
• 37:15
  You know, there were a lot of reforms that felt like
• 37:18
  we were moving on from a stale period in Australia's history.
• 37:21
  You become Environment Minister, but you don't get the climate change portfolio.
• 37:25
  He gives that to Penny Wong.
• 37:27
  Correct.
• 37:28
  Yeah.
• 37:28
  Was that a slab in the face?
• 37:32
  Well, slab in the face, could you call it what you will?
• 37:34
  I mean, one of the primary reasons that I said yes,
• 37:38
  wasn't only that I knew that a government could get stuff done,
• 37:41
  which I thought would make the country better.
• 37:44
  But I was despairing of the years that we'd spent with the centre-right
• 37:49
  parties that you've just talked about, running the place particularly on climate.
• 37:54
  And I felt that, I mean, Howard, who was Prime Minister John Howard at the time,
• 37:58
  actually commissioned a report, which said to him, look,
• 38:01
  you can set up an emissions trading scheme and we can start to reduce greenhouse emissions,
• 38:04
  so we can start to do something about it.
• 38:06
  It'll be pretty low-key, but we could do it.
• 38:08
  And even that was too much for them.
• 38:09
  It was a bridge too far.
• 38:11
  And so for me, who was already working on these things and, you know,
• 38:16
  felt very strongly about them, I thought if I can be part of the team that dislodges John Howard,
• 38:20
  I'll be happy.
• 38:22
  I didn't set my sights on having any kind of portfolio, Josh.
• 38:27
  I didn't join a faction when I went into the party.
• 38:30
  But you were the shadow environment spokesperson in opposition.
• 38:33
  Absolutely, yeah.
• 38:34
  Would it be a stand-to-reason that you would take over the environment?
• 38:36
  Oh, I'm sorry.
• 38:37
  And all of the climate policy, or not all of it,
• 38:40
  but a fair bit of the climate policy at that time was worked up by me in my office.
• 38:46
  Right, but then you get into government and all of a sudden,
• 38:48
  you're not the minister who's responsible for negotiating at the international level.
• 38:53
  It's the gift of the leader, and it's also the gift of the factions.
• 38:56
  And I mean, it's a really interesting conversation in a way,
• 38:59
  because it's such a long time ago now.
• 39:01
  And I didn't agonise for too long, but I did give some thought before I went in as to whether
• 39:06
  I would join the left or right faction.
• 39:10
  And I decided that I would join neither.
• 39:12
  And that was partly because there were aspects of each that I really liked,
• 39:14
  and aspects of each which I didn't quite share the value set.
• 39:17
  What did you like about the right faction?
• 39:20
  Practical, you know, driven to sort of get stuff done,
• 39:25
  effective, disciplined, sort of things that you need to have in government.
• 39:29
  I dealt with the right factional leaders back in the day
• 39:33
  when Hawke was prime minister and negotiating preference things with green movements and so
• 39:37
  and so forth.
• 39:37
  So, I mean, would I go and hang out and have beers with them and talk about our favourite bands?
• 39:42
  No, but could I sit down and have a sensible rational discussion about them
• 39:46
  as to what may or may not happen?
• 39:48
  Yes, so that's the part I liked about them.
• 39:50
  Right.
• 39:51
  And economically, probably more
• 39:55
  orthodox, but probably more responsible than the left.
• 39:58
  Oh, it's interesting.
• 39:59
  You struck me as more lefty.
• 40:01
  There you go.
• 40:03
  Do you remember finding out that you weren't going to be in charge of climate change?
• 40:06
  Sure, of course.
• 40:07
  Yeah.
• 40:08
  How did that happen?
• 40:08
  Did Kevin Rudd tell you?
• 40:10
  Oh, I can't remember the details, but look,
• 40:12
  you know, it's the gift of the leader and it's the gift of the factions.
• 40:14
  You say that, but it's a little bit rich, isn't it?
• 40:17
  You've been working on it for all this time.
• 40:18
  Oh, well, look, you know, I'm not going to slip my wrist about it.
• 40:21
  You know what I mean?
• 40:22
  I'm plenty to do.
• 40:23
  I think it made all the jobs as well.
• 40:25
  And was there a difficulty?
• 40:26
  I mean, you know, this is the perennial sort of conundrum of being inside
• 40:29
  the tent rather than outside of it being the critic.
• 40:32
  You come from this position of authority and respect in Australian creative arts,
• 40:36
  where you basically have the ability to say,
• 40:38
  fuck you to whoever you want to,
• 40:39
  to say whatever you want to,
• 40:41
  and then all of a sudden you're in government,
• 40:43
  you're wearing a suit and you're all buttoned up.
• 40:44
  And, you know, the position on forests and the position on the Tasmanian pulp mill
• 40:49
  and the position on US military bases in Australia
• 40:52
  is all very different from stuff you've been singing about.
• 40:55
  Well, I think that's quite right.
• 40:57
  I think that, well, let me do the big question first.
• 41:01
  We don't, we can dive into as much of this detail as you like.
• 41:05
  I understood better than anybody else.
• 41:07
  I've said this many times before,
• 41:08
  but I understood probably better than anyone else
• 41:10
  what I was entering into.
• 41:13
  But I'm not a starry-eyed utopian who thinks that, you know,
• 41:17
  fairies are responsible for putting pumpkins at the bottom of the garden.
• 41:21
  I'm sorry, I'm not.
• 41:22
  And I'd seen politics up close.
• 41:24
  And anyone who's a student of politics understands what's involved.
• 41:28
  And now my views and my attitude about what I thought
• 41:32
  or felt or believed in changed at all when I went into politics.
• 41:36
  It's just that I didn't broadcast it to the world anymore.
• 41:39
  If it was at odds with the party that I had joined and some parts of it
• 41:43
  were at odds with the party I joined.
• 41:44
  Not a lot, probably less than just about anywhere else,
• 41:47
  maybe the Greens, but probably not much.
• 41:50
  So I was ready for that discipline.
• 41:52
  And, you know, I knew I was going to lose skin,
• 41:57
  but to be really clear about it,
• 42:00
  the respect and the adoration and the way we look up at people
• 42:03
  and the artistic and creative world,
• 42:05
  it's pretty facile at times.
• 42:07
  You know, you have your moment in the sun,
• 42:09
  and then everybody thinks you're a sun god.
• 42:11
  Well, actually, maybe you just got lucky.
• 42:12
  You know, so...
• 42:13
  Right, but while you're lucky,
• 42:16
  you have a big impact on people on the way people...
• 42:18
  But there's no...
• 42:19
  Think about the impact that you had on the way that Australians think about Indigenous land rights.
• 42:24
  Yeah, but look, let's talk about impact.
• 42:26
  I mean, impact has got so many different and important measurements and critiques.
• 42:31
  What about the impact of introducing a funding system in education?
• 42:36
  When I became Education Minister and Julie Gillaby came Prime Minister and gave me all her portfolios,
• 42:42
  which ensures that Aboriginal students get paid or are supported,
• 42:46
  and their schools are supported to a greater extent
• 42:49
  than people in well-off areas.
• 42:50
  I mean, that is a massive impact.
• 42:53
  What about taking Japan to the International Court of Justice to stop, you know,
• 42:56
  so-called scientific wailing and the Southern Ocean?
• 42:58
  That is a massive...
• 42:59
  I mean, I could rock on forever.
• 43:01
  So, yes, you've got a voice when you're out.
• 43:03
  Of course you do, but you can also do stuff when you're in.
• 43:05
  I'm not being in and out, and I'm out again, and I understand how both of them work,
• 43:10
  and both of them, you can do stuff.
• 43:12
  I mean, it's fascinating.
• 43:13
  Like, when you die and you go to heaven,
• 43:15
  and there's a big ledger, you know,
• 43:18
  with the impact that Peter Garrett has had on the world,
• 43:20
  and there's some old-fashioned weighing scales with those little,
• 43:24
  you know, the little weights that you put on them.
• 43:26
  Which side is... which side is heavier?
• 43:29
  So, this is the difference between a journalist and a person.
• 43:34
  I don't think like that.
• 43:36
  It's seriously the difference between Josh Seps and the normal person.
• 43:39
  No, no, honestly, don't think about it.
• 43:41
  And to get back to the thing about not having a climate responsibility, you know.
• 43:44
  Once I was non-factualized, I was on my own in there.
• 43:48
  All I had was my capacity to work,
• 43:52
  to develop trusting relationships with people,
• 43:55
  and to express my views and to be a team player.
• 43:59
  Which is, I understood and I wanted to be.
• 44:01
  That was a team I joined.
• 44:03
  I didn't join because there was another team that you left.
• 44:05
  Like, I mean, in the 2006,
• 44:07
  I think it was the Victorian State election, Bob Brown had a go at you,
• 44:10
  who was ahead of the Greens for...
• 44:11
  Oh, you were saying that, like,
• 44:13
  you were encouraging people to vote for Labour,
• 44:15
  saying, I don't know what the Greens are just going to...
• 44:16
  That's the Greens will be in an alliance with the right way.
• 44:19
  It wasn't a silliest thing on earth.
• 44:20
  I mean, that wasn't, I mean, from the Greens perspective,
• 44:23
  it's like, well, hang on, you were part of our tribe.
• 44:25
  No, it wasn't part of...
• 44:26
  No, no, no, no.
• 44:26
  Well, you were in environmentalists,
• 44:27
  and you weren't part of the party, but you're like...
• 44:29
  The fact that people confuse the Green Party with environmentalists
• 44:33
  is just, that's a part of our political culture.
• 44:35
  But, I mean, give me a break, you know.
• 44:38
  I'm in the Labour Party.
• 44:39
  I'm a member of Parliament,
• 44:41
  and I've been criticised for campaigning for the Labour Party.
• 44:44
  Well, you know, sorry.
• 44:46
  Right, right.
• 44:46
  But I mean, it's...
• 44:47
  They know the guard it as being a betrayal...
• 44:50
  Oh, and they know your pure...
• 44:51
  I suppose it's a purity test, right?
• 44:53
  About, like, you used to be a good guy,
• 44:54
  and now you've sold out.
• 44:55
  They bought it into the same...
• 44:59
  Framing that Murdoch and the Australian bought it into.
• 45:03
  So, it was very interesting, you know.
• 45:05
  You had the greens on the left, on the far left, if you like,
• 45:08
  and you had Murdoch and Kawhan the far right.
• 45:10
  What way can we damage this person,
• 45:12
  who is probably going to become a minister,
• 45:15
  and will be in the cabinet?
• 45:16
  Well, we're damaging by saying,
• 45:18
  Oh, look, you know, he was a pureer...
• 45:20
  Pureer than pure, spouting green politics from the stage,
• 45:24
  and now he's a nasty dirty Labour politician, you know,
• 45:28
  abiding by the policies of the party.
• 45:30
  Shock!
• 45:30
  Right, it's like the charge of hypocrisy
• 45:32
  is sort of the easiest way for a single person to make you down,
• 45:35
  isn't it?
• 45:35
  No, because there's no way to escape,
• 45:37
  because everyone is compromised.
• 45:38
  Exactly, and, you know, I knew all of that,
• 45:41
  and you just let that stuff go.
• 45:43
  And the same with this business of, you know,
• 45:45
  where did you end up or what did you have?
• 45:47
  I mean, people are watching this thing on TV in this country at the moment,
• 45:51
  the former Conservative Party tear themselves to pieces.
• 45:54
  But I've come to say...
• 45:54
  This is a three-part ABC TV series about the previous...
• 45:57
  Yeah, but one of their prime ministers, Malcolm Turnbull,
• 46:00
  who some people will know.
• 46:02
  He's been on this show.
• 46:02
  You can go there and find the...
• 46:04
  Yeah, well, there you go.
• 46:05
  I'm sure, and he would have defended his position, I'm sure,
• 46:08
  but I know, remember, he had a conversation with him about,
• 46:11
  because we went in at the same time.
• 46:13
  Yeah, right.
• 46:13
  We knew one another before we went in.
• 46:15
  We were high profile figures.
• 46:17
  We shared a common boundary,
• 46:18
  so we were quite often doing events together.
• 46:20
  And I've got a lot of time for Turnbull in some ways.
• 46:22
  But I said to him, look, Malcolm,
• 46:24
  there is a difference between you and me what we're doing,
• 46:26
  because we were sort of saying, you know,
• 46:27
  it's ridiculous the way in which you sort of get judged
• 46:30
  by this sort of dishonor thing that the media creates.
• 46:32
  We're actually down in the ditches,
• 46:33
  trying to do a bit of work, okay, whatever.
• 46:36
  I said, yeah, there is one difference, though.
• 46:38
  You have come here to be prime minister.
• 46:40
  I've come here to be a serving member of the Labour Party.
• 46:43
  And it was true.
• 46:45
  The big question around whether I should have done environment at all
• 46:49
  because of the expectations and the easy way in which it could be paraded,
• 46:53
  I actually think we got an amazing amount done.
• 46:55
  And so I'm happy to say that it's the most effective term
• 46:58
  that any environment minister's had in Australia.
• 47:00
  I'll just say that, not trying to be modest,
• 47:03
  but that's, I'll state it, and I think it's on the record.
• 47:06
  But I actually enjoyed myself more
• 47:07
  and felt like I was doing a better job
• 47:09
  when I was education minister.
• 47:11
  I didn't know anything about it much.
• 47:14
  And I had to learn from the ground up,
• 47:15
  and we had a lot of stuff going on.
• 47:17
  It's very important to the country.
• 47:19
  And that's what I went to do.
• 47:20
  I went to be a working politician.
• 47:23
  I mean, it's ridiculously naive and maybe it sounds self-serving,
• 47:27
  but I actually did go to serve.
• 47:28
  I mean, I didn't have to go there for the money.
• 47:30
  I didn't have to go there for the handclaps.
• 47:32
  I wanted to go.
• 47:34
  It's great, isn't it?
• 47:35
  I mean, it gives me a little tingle up the spine
• 47:37
  to think about how a democratic process works.
• 47:39
  We're just a person who runs for office.
• 47:42
  Yeah, you know, who's able to get elected.
• 47:44
  They will suddenly have a major impact on the direction of the country
• 47:48
  just because people go, yeah, thumbs up.
• 47:49
  Let's try this guy.
• 47:50
  Look, it's incredible.
• 47:51
  I mean, for me now,
• 47:52
  particularly I've not time in ACF, but also in politics.
• 47:55
  I'm looking at younger people that are either worked with me
• 47:57
  or for me or were young activists,
• 48:00
  campaigning on the environment.
• 48:02
  They're in state parliaments.
• 48:03
  They're governments, they're ministers.
• 48:04
  They're stepping up and doing that thing as well.
• 48:07
  And they're going through the same sort of,
• 48:09
  I've really got to try and get this done thing.
• 48:11
  It's just that all of mine was done
• 48:12
  in Technicolor and widescreen in public.
• 48:14
  Yeah, exactly.
• 48:15
  How was working with Mark Latham?
• 48:17
  You mentioned him.
• 48:18
  I'd forgotten that he was the person to do.
• 48:19
  I never, I never got to work with him.
• 48:21
  Right, yeah.
• 48:22
  We're in opposition though.
• 48:23
  Correct.
• 48:24
  Oh, very little.
• 48:24
  He went pretty quick.
• 48:26
  We're pretty quick, yeah.
• 48:26
  What's happening? What do you make of his evolution?
• 48:28
  I honestly don't understand it.
• 48:30
  And it's a bit of a shame.
• 48:32
  People who don't know who abroad,
• 48:33
  this was a very,
• 48:34
  it was with the head of the Labor Party
• 48:36
  who has now subsequently become.
• 48:38
  He was a member for a,
• 48:40
  you might call it a far right party,
• 48:41
  one nation, sort of anti-immigrant,
• 48:44
  you know, ultra conservative party.
• 48:45
  And then he was kicked out of that party.
• 48:46
  But basically he's,
• 48:47
  he's quite a pro populist anti-immigrant politician now,
• 48:53
  which is very different from the figure
• 48:55
  that he presented when you worked with him.
• 48:58
  Yeah, I mean, I, I,
• 49:00
  I went to one of the town hall meetings
• 49:01
  that he did just to see what he was like.
• 49:03
  And I mean, he gave a pretty good speech.
• 49:05
  And then he stayed and took questions from everybody
• 49:07
  for literally about 40 or 50 minutes.
• 49:09
  So I thought, wow, this is like democracy and action.
• 49:12
  Yeah.
• 49:12
  I mean, people do change.
• 49:13
  They do swing from pillar to post.
• 49:15
  I probably haven't changed much.
• 49:18
  It's funny.
• 49:19
  No, I was listening to the new album
• 49:20
  when I was going, this man is consistent,
• 49:22
  right?
• 49:22
  Sorry.
• 49:23
  He's a consistent artist.
• 49:25
  You know what you're going to get.
• 49:26
  Oh, my God.
• 49:27
  Oh, I'm trying.
• 49:28
  All right.
• 49:29
  How about, how are you feeling about this year?
• 49:31
  I mean, I'm, I go back and forth
• 49:33
  about optimism and pessimism
• 49:34
  about the fate of, I mean, just the planet,
• 49:37
  politics, you mentioned instability,
• 49:39
  you mentioned, you know, peace and love
• 49:42
  and nuclear weapons.
• 49:43
  Yeah.
• 49:43
  We've got an election in the United States.
• 49:45
  We've got an election in the UK.
• 49:46
  Yeah.
• 49:47
  Both very consequential.
• 49:48
  Absolutely.
• 49:49
  And we've got a war raging in Europe.
• 49:51
  Yes, we do.
• 49:52
  Uh, yeah, look, it's, it, it is a really difficult time
• 49:55
  wherever you sit in the world
• 49:57
  and however close you're paying attention.
• 49:59
  And I must confess, Josh, for the first time ever
• 50:02
  over Christmas, I thought, I'm just totally taking time out.
• 50:06
  Plus, I made a record that I really love
• 50:08
  and I've enjoyed being able to do that.
• 50:10
  It's important to me.
• 50:11
  I feel, you know,
• 50:13
  my blood is sort of still pumping essentially
• 50:16
  when I do that.
• 50:18
  And it's about stuff that's important to me
• 50:20
  and I care about and I hope people listen to it.
• 50:22
  But it's that other side of my life
• 50:24
  which I'm lucky enough to have.
• 50:26
  So I took some time out from it.
• 50:29
  I'm always going to be optimistic.
• 50:31
  But I think that we need to find a way,
• 50:36
  if we're communicators like I am,
• 50:39
  of sharing what we think and feel about things with others
• 50:42
  that doesn't make them switch off
• 50:43
  and feel like it's all too hard and all too much.
• 50:45
  And I think about the victories that I've been involved in
• 50:48
  or the good steps that have been taken,
• 50:50
  not me personally doing stuff,
• 50:51
  but working with others,
• 50:52
  whether it's a community group to stop sand mining
• 50:55
  on several mile beach on the South Coast
• 50:57
  or whether it's being in the government
• 50:59
  and deciding that we were going to introduce something
• 51:01
  which changed people's lives
• 51:02
  and made a big difference to them.
• 51:03
  And everything in between.
• 51:07
  And if I look at the long course of history
• 51:10
  where the discrimination, the bias, the prejudices,
• 51:14
  and the imposition of power on people
• 51:17
  who are either non-elected or weren't in the right family,
• 51:20
  i.e. the royal family has started to be washed away.
• 51:23
  I mean, there's a lot of fight back
• 51:25
  but it started to be washed away.
• 51:26
  I feel positive.
• 51:28
  But if I look at what's happening right now,
• 51:29
  I think this is a tricky, difficult moment
• 51:31
  and be informed.
• 51:34
  When you talk about people who are not elected
• 51:36
  or born into the right family,
• 51:38
  what do you make of Republicanism
• 51:41
  in Australia at the moment?
• 51:42
  I mean, it's like, I was such an ardent.
• 51:45
  I was the president of the Republican Association
• 51:48
  at University, at uni,
• 51:50
  which one for UTS.
• 51:52
  Okay.
• 51:53
  Doing journalism and communications.
• 51:55
  Yes, is that your...
• 51:56
  Are you an S.O.E.?
• 51:57
  You're an S.O.E.?
• 51:58
  You're the only same thing.
• 51:59
  Okay, that's just our publicist,
• 52:01
  our wonderful publicist from Sony,
• 52:03
  who's joining Peter here.
• 52:06
  And at the time, I felt like,
• 52:08
  so this is the turn of the millennium.
• 52:10
  This is when we're having a referendum about it.
• 52:13
  And for non-Austradians,
• 52:15
  this was a referendum about whether or not
• 52:17
  to remove the Queen as the head of state
• 52:19
  and create a, you know, a democratically,
• 52:21
  not democratically elected,
• 52:22
  but a democratic head of state.
• 52:25
  Correct, yeah.
• 52:27
  Now...
• 52:27
  We're on the same team here.
• 52:28
  Yeah, and yet now...
• 52:32
  I sort of look around the world,
• 52:33
  and I know, like, there are worse things.
• 52:37
  There are worse things that...
• 52:39
  Oh, really?
• 52:39
  You're going to go there.
• 52:40
  Honestly, like, I haven't done anything
• 52:43
  lost to the cause,
• 52:44
  but there are worse things
• 52:47
  than stupid, stable,
• 52:49
  pomp-filled,
• 52:51
  undemocratic systems.
• 52:56
  So, yeah, I'm not going to go with you on that.
• 52:58
  I'm not coming with me on that, Charlie.
• 53:00
  Sorry.
• 53:01
  I'm ridiculously un-reconstructed
• 53:03
  and I'm purest.
• 53:06
  Not malleable at all.
• 53:07
  Yeah.
• 53:07
  Look, I get it...
• 53:08
  I mean, the Scandinavian models find, you know.
• 53:11
  They ride a bike, they go and teach.
• 53:13
  You know, they have their own businesses.
• 53:15
  They don't get a million tax breaks.
• 53:18
  You know, they sort of provide some sense of stability
• 53:21
  and something that people can identify with and look up at.
• 53:23
  Look, I understand that.
• 53:26
  The charade that we see in the United Kingdom
• 53:29
  or in England is beyond me.
• 53:30
  I mean, I never got it.
• 53:32
  I never got it when I was a kid
• 53:33
  and I feel like he's actually the same way about it.
• 53:36
  Did you feel anything when the Queen died?
• 53:39
  No.
• 53:40
  I mean, people shedding tears.
• 53:42
  I mean, I don't mean disrespect,
• 53:43
  but, you know, seriously.
• 53:45
  I had a funny moment, though, with my wife,
• 53:48
  years and years ago, at the start of a royal visit.
• 53:51
  And for some reason,
• 53:53
  we were driving down South Downing Street
• 53:56
  back in the day before they did all the major engineering.
• 53:59
  And we could see the lights flashing lights
• 54:01
  and motorbikes and things coming to us.
• 54:02
  And we thought, wow, what's going on?
• 54:04
  I said, oh, wait a minute.
• 54:05
  I said, oh, Phil and Liz are in town.
• 54:07
  Of course.
• 54:09
  I said, we're going to pull over.
• 54:10
  And, you know, give them the finger.
• 54:12
  You know, this is me.
• 54:14
  Radical Republican laughs.
• 54:16
  Anyway, so we pulled over.
• 54:18
  There was hardly any traffic around
• 54:19
  because I sort of cleared everyone away.
• 54:20
  And we got across to the median strip.
• 54:22
  No cops to stop us.
• 54:24
  And down they came
• 54:26
  in the role or whatever it was
• 54:27
  with all everything.
• 54:28
  And were they open?
• 54:29
  Was it open?
• 54:29
  Was it open?
• 54:30
  No, they were inside.
• 54:31
  They were inside.
• 54:32
  They come towards us.
• 54:34
  But you can see inside the movie so slowly,
• 54:36
  they're having a discussion.
• 54:37
  Right?
• 54:38
  Slash argument.
• 54:39
  Yeah.
• 54:40
  Whatever.
• 54:40
  Yeah.
• 54:41
  And then suddenly someone,
• 54:42
  the driver must have said, um,
• 54:43
  mum, you know,
• 54:44
  Yes.
• 54:45
  Australian police.
• 54:46
  There is a gentleman raising the
• 54:49
  Libyan finger.
• 54:50
  Well, you didn't give it.
• 54:51
  You didn't give it.
• 54:52
  No, and they sort of turn around
• 54:54
  and just went straight into wave.
• 54:56
  Yes.
• 54:56
  Just automatically.
• 54:57
  I just thought.
• 54:57
  My subjects.
• 54:58
  Yeah, myself.
• 54:59
  But I also thought,
• 55:00
  good on you, you know,
• 55:01
  like you broke out of having a bicker.
• 55:04
  Yeah.
• 55:04
  I'm imagining that.
• 55:05
  Hardly.
• 55:05
  Hardly.
• 55:06
  To wave at these two humble Australian
• 55:09
  sermons.
• 55:10
  It's funny.
• 55:10
  I mean, I never would have thought
• 55:12
  that I would have been at all emotional
• 55:14
  about such a ridiculous institution.
• 55:16
  But when she died,
• 55:17
  when I woke up that morning,
• 55:19
  I did feel this,
• 55:21
  I was overcome just momentarily
• 55:22
  with this sense of like,
• 55:25
  foreboding a little bit.
• 55:27
  Just that he is the sort of chuck.
• 55:29
  Well, the full sort of chuck partly.
• 55:31
  But I don't think it was so much
• 55:32
  at the thought of chuck.
• 55:33
  I think it was like,
• 55:35
  all right,
• 55:36
  here's another way
• 55:38
  in which we're passing into a new era.
• 55:40
  Right?
• 55:40
  We've had this 20th century
• 55:42
  with all of its certainties.
• 55:43
  Yeah.
• 55:44
  We've had the same woman on the throne
• 55:46
  since my grandmother,
• 55:47
  you know, was,
• 55:48
  you know, well, not a little girl,
• 55:50
  but a girl.
• 55:50
  Yeah.
• 55:51
  And now we're entering into this new,
• 55:55
  these uncharted waters with Trump,
• 55:57
  with Brexit, with like,
• 55:58
  climate, with everything.
• 55:59
  And just here's one other small way
• 56:01
  in which that sense of constancy
• 56:04
  and duty and sort of permanence
• 56:06
  and sufferance and kind of,
• 56:07
  you know, the sort of stoicism
• 56:09
  that she represented.
• 56:10
  Oh, totally.
• 56:10
  Yeah.
• 56:11
  Is being washed away.
• 56:12
  And well, it's sort of irrational,
• 56:14
  but that was very rare.
• 56:15
  No, no, no, that's, that's really illuminating.
• 56:17
  And I think, I mean,
• 56:18
  I don't have a great deal of respect
• 56:20
  for the institution.
• 56:21
  I mean, she was diligent as a monarch
• 56:23
  and head of state,
• 56:24
  but she's not my head of state.
• 56:27
  And I actually think that,
• 56:30
  that idea of constancy,
• 56:31
  elders, people holding positions
• 56:33
  which they sort of apply a protocol to
• 56:36
  does have a role in our world.
• 56:38
  We need that sort of thing.
• 56:40
  I wouldn't want to be exacerbating it too much,
• 56:43
  but you're deeper than me on that sense
• 56:45
  because I didn't, I didn't really feel that.
• 56:46
  Well, I may just be more superficial
• 56:48
  in the sense that she's the most obvious,
• 56:49
  superficial example of that.
• 56:51
  But where do we find those elders
• 56:53
  if not through pomp and tradition?
• 56:56
  Well, you need to find them in your own community
• 56:58
  and respect them in your own communities
• 57:00
  and your families and so on.
• 57:01
  I think that's really important.
• 57:02
  And maybe we also need to have some structures
• 57:06
  which give them an opportunity
• 57:07
  to share their wisdom.
• 57:08
  I mean, there's a council of elders now
• 57:10
  that's been set up internationally
• 57:12
  which provides advice to the UN
• 57:14
  and people on climate issues
• 57:16
  and just general.
• 57:17
  It's just advice only.
• 57:18
  I think there's a real place for that.
• 57:19
  Plus, we're living longer.
• 57:22
  Oh, mate.
• 57:22
  Like, you know, it doesn't necessarily make us
• 57:23
  wise, though.
• 57:24
  And it's not, no, but, you know,
• 57:26
  let's just use the bell curve
• 57:28
  and just assume that some of us will be.
• 57:30
  And a lot of us will be lasting longer.
• 57:33
  So, I mean, for me, I think
• 57:36
  one of the issues here is that
• 57:39
  we've lost track of the Republican debate
• 57:42
  and what it means to our culture
• 57:44
  because we're focused on other things.
• 57:46
  We're focused on ourselves.
• 57:47
  We're focused on our screens.
• 57:49
  Some of us,
• 57:50
  luckily, in my case, not focused on
• 57:53
  the battle that life is,
• 57:54
  paying a mortgage or trying to find
• 57:55
  somebody to rent or whatever it might be.
• 57:57
  And we haven't had a consistent
• 57:59
  fun expression.
• 58:00
  So, to hear the rest of this conversation,
• 58:02
  go to uncomfortableconversations.substac.com slash listen
• 58:06
  and you will get your own personal
• 58:08
  premium podcast feed
• 58:10
  with at least three extra episodes
• 58:12
  of the podcast every month
• 58:14
  and heaps of extra stuff,
• 58:15
  including the remainder right now.
• 58:17
  Of the fabulous conversation you've just been hearing.
• 58:19
  If it was worth listening to this much of,
• 58:22
  don't rob yourself of the rest.
• 58:24
  Well, let your phone light down
• 58:26
  and search for uncomfortable conversations
• 58:27
  over the summer.