Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson

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Former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  G'day, humans! Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas, and today's show is a real
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  ripper. John Anderson was the 11th Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. That's the equivalent
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  of the Vice President in Australia. In one of the most influential and reformist governments,
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  the Howard government. He was Deputy PM from 1999 to 2005. He was actually the acting
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  Prime Minister, meaning that he was technically the Prime Minister on September 11, 2001,
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  which we get into here. John, I have very different. He is a deeply conservative Christian.
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  I needless to say, I am not. I was interested in his ideas about where culture is, where politics
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  is, what the experience of being in office during this momentous time at the beginning of
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  this century was like. Something you need to know in context, if you're not on Australian
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  for this conversation, is that there was previously an airline in Australia called ANSET, which
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  was founded in 1936. So it was a long-standing Australian carrier. It was mostly domestic,
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  but they also flew all over the Asia Pacific, to China and Hong Kong and Taiwan, Indonesia.
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  And they collapsed in 2001. That was the end of that airline. And at the time, in addition
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  to being Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson was the Minister for Transport. He was dealing
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  with the collapse of this major Australian company. It wasn't technically Australian at
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  the time. It was a member of the Star Alliance. It had a part share from Singapore Airlines.
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  It was mostly owned by New Zealand. It had been going through troubles for a few years.
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  But in the lead up to 9-11 happening, the government was trying to figure out a way of
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  bailing out this iconic brand that most Australians thought of as being Australian. So when we
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  start talking about 9-11 and he starts talking about ANSET, that's the context for that.
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  John is a companion of the Order of Australia, which is the highest grade rank that a citizen
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  can get in Australia. It's what the Brits would have as a knighthood. And he now has a podcast
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  called Conversations, which is conversations with thought leaders around the world. I hope
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  you enjoy as much as I did this fascinating conversation and occasionally rumble with
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  the one and only John Anderson.
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  Mate, I'm still a spring chicken. What are you talking about? I'm new to this game.
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  And congratulations on everything that you're doing as well. I'm glad you've been able
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  to pivot from politics into becoming a, I don't know, what are you now? A public intellectual,
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  a writer, a podcaster, a contenter? This is a funny thing. I mean, I'm not an intellectual.
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  I get painted as one sometimes. I'm not. I'm just a moderately well educated kid from
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  the bush who's worried about where our country's going. And our model, the model with this
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  from day one, which we've never monetized. They've always lost a bit of money. But our
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  model is just to try and make good thinking available to people so they can draw their
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  own conclusions, particularly if we think it's good thinking that's not getting a wide
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  enough hearing. That's what we're trying to do. Is there a risk that in this space we
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  end up talking to people from the right? But that's not true. I mean, a lot of the people
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  I talk to take a Jonathan Hyte, take a, take a, even in America, Commissar, take Warren Farrell,
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  they're not figures of the right at all. Anyway, clear thinking is what I'm after? No, I mean,
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  I like it. I'm sometimes mindful of whether or not the space becomes a bit of an echo chamber
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  with people who have the same concerns about the same things that we're not talking about. And
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  it's whether there's a risk of, I don't know, becoming a Trojan horse for talking about.
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  Well, I didn't think that the marketplaces now are becoming very crowded. Yeah.
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  And there's a lot of people doing good stuff out there, but there's also a lot of good talent.
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  I mean, you had Douglas Murray, goodness me, isn't the bloke is so intelligent and such an
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  effective communicator. He's also a great company. He's ferocious. I mean, I spent a week with him
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  because we were touring all around the country. We went to earth and Adelaide and Brisbane,
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  Sydney and Melbourne and you know, so we were staying in the same hotels and getting dinner and so
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  on. He's the kind of person who, when you get on a stage with him, I know that if I'm going to
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  go toe to toe to him with him and start arguing with him about something, he's going to win.
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  Like, there is just no chance. It's going to be a blood bath and I'm going to get up, you know,
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  wiping, wiping blood and feces off my face, but it's worth doing anyway because to watch him,
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  to watch his mind and flight is just like, it's an incredible sparkling thing.
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  Can I talk about politics for a moment before we get to contemporary culture? Because I'm just
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  interested in your experiences in politics and so you're the deputy prime minister, obviously,
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  which meant that you were the acting prime minister for certain periods. One period of which was
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  was the September 11th attacks and you were the acting prime minister of Australia. I'm just
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  fascinated by where you were and how you got the news. Well, there was a pretty extraordinary
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  few days. I was actually at home, John Hart had left on the Saturday before 9-11 for America
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  and I got a call very, very early Australian time on Sunday morning from New Zealand.
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  It was the chairman and the CEO of Anset Airlines, telling me that
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  Anset was in such deep financial doggie do that. They were going to ground the airline with
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  and there was tough luck with people who were left all over the world and that precipitated
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  a crisis. I got a charter as you could as you know, I was acting PM to get the camera immediately.
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  We worked right through Sunday, right through Sunday night, all through Monday and so forth,
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  trying to find a way to keep the airline flying, get it back in the air and then arrange for an
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  orderly sail, but it was so deeply in debt. There were so many airports that wouldn't let the
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  immunity more because of their outstanding use and so forth. We couldn't have done it to the
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  taxpayer. But the reason I background that was to say that by the time 9-11 came around,
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  I had gone to bed, utterly exhausted, probably tired of the night ever been in my life because we
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  just walked through Sunday night, Monday night, a cup of catnaps and that was it. Really desperately
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  trying to save that airline. It wasn't Australian, but you know, we were very attached to it and it
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  met it up to a lot of people including those who were stranded. And then my press secretary, yes,
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  rang me and I was in that deep fog of sleep. I'd only been asleep for an hour or so and I'd
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  hit the mobile phone so hard that it stopped and then it rang again. He said, get your screen on,
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  get your television on. I was in a strange motel in Canberra. The remote student work you wouldn't
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  believe at the batteries wouldn't work. It's hard to try and work out through the fog how to turn
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  the thing on manually. Just in time to see the horrific event still unfolding. I remember thinking
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  this can't be real. I think that's what we all thought at the time. Yeah, I mean, we all thought
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  it as lay people, but you thought it as the acting leader of one of the US's closest allies.
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  And so all of a sudden I assume that things have to kick into gear and kick into operation. I mean,
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  do you start thinking, well, okay, I have to find the PM. I have to speak with the Prime Minister.
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  I know that he's over there. What are the next thoughts that go through your head?
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  Well, all of the above, you know, the phone started ringing madly. My two-for-staff Peter Langhorne
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  a remarkable Australian, the Australian Federal Police, and then defense signals rang me. I
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  spoke to Alexander Dana, then defense signals rang and said, we can patch you through to the PM
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  because we didn't know until then what had happened where he was, whether he was all right.
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  He's in the basement of the Australian Embassy in Washington. He's safe and sound. They gave me a,
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  I think it was a seven-digit number. I read it down a bit of paper and then rang it as I recall.
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  And it was the clearest line I've ever had, John. You're so close.
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  The spies know how to create a clear line. Yeah, what else have the Spooks got? Yeah,
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  it can't be told that there's all the time. I was tremendously proud, actually. I have to say
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  of all of our people that stay. We tripped into place such counterterrorism, emergency measures
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  as we could. There was an assumption that there'd be a series of rolling attacks,
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  or we worked on the assumption it was highly probable. They even locked down part of my house.
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  So we're not letting you go back to your office. You better work from the motel for the rest of the night.
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  Anyway, by next morning, I was astonished that people were able to tell me
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  with a very high degree of certainty who'd been behind it and how it had been masterminded.
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  They were very, very quick to piece it all together. And I remember thinking,
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  I know I look like I'm washed up because I just physically haven't had any sleep, but I have
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  got to pump up blood through the face and go and become on television because this is a time to
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  become. And I remember explaining something that has always been dear to my heart as best I could,
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  that this was a very powerful reminder, that much as we might want to airbrush evil out of our
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  consciousness, it hasn't gone away. And that was relevant at the time because remember 2001,
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  it was anyway 11 years since the Berlin Wall had come down. We all thought democracy had
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  won out. We thought it was a mopping up operation, freedom and light and prosperity would spread
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  across the globe. Francis Fucki Army wrote the end of history, which was a play on Karl Marx.
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  Karl Marx said the end of history will be, you know, a socialist Nevada,
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  Fucki Army was saying, no, it turns out to be democracy and freedom and free enterprise.
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  And he was this terrible shock, but no, there were still people who despised everything that we
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  held dear. Were we too smug? So were we smug in the 80s and 90s? Yeah, I do. I think we were.
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  Yeah, I don't know. People talked about the peace dividend and we can all.
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  My father-in-law was a very distinguished former naval officer and he had done the Royal
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  College of Defence Studies, probably the world's premier course certainly in England,
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  and they were a great naval power. And spent a year studying geopolitics around the world
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  he was an astonishingly wise man. And I remember him saying to me as an MP, this smugness is very
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  silly, we will now see the rise of ugly, mid-sized actors around the world and possibly over time
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  the emergence again of major powers that don't like us. Well, that was prescient. So going back
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  to September 11th or 12th, did you, who did you seek to make contact with? Did you speak with
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  the US ambassador in Canberra and what were their meetings with the Defence Minister or with
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  national security about what the next steps are? Absolutely. They certainly were. I didn't
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  speak with the American ambassador as it happened. They certainly do Alexander Dana and then
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  to Peter Coffey. He was the Defence Minister at the time. He was in lockstep anyway because of
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  anset, working through with our financial advisors and so forth what the real situation was
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  looking for a way through. As I say, we wanted to arrange an orderly sale to somebody who could have
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  picked the airline up again and loved it. We genuinely tried. That was our objective. And in the end,
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  we said no, it requires a tax post to do things. Tax post shouldn't have to do. That hot part of
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  the model of our government, we tried to always think of what was fair to us a tax post to do.
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  But the next morning we went straight into advisors with the Australian Federal Police, with the
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  military people with ASIO, with ASIC, sorry, ISIS, the, you know, homeland, international security
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  and what have you as well as homeland. We had a very early cabinet meeting done in an anti-RM
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  off the Prime Minister's office with secure communications. One of the biggest and emerging
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  issues though was the need to get the Prime Minister back, work out how we express solidarity with
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  the Americans. That was the tripping of answers. Of course, it was the result of that for the first
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  time ever. And then there were also other issues like how do we get the PM back here as I say,
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  given that the Americans are quoted to all airspace. He came back in the end on a Air Force 2,
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  took him to, I think, Hawaii from memory, where there was a ground at the Qantas 747 that hadn't
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  been allowed to proceed into, into America. And it came home with the PM from Hawaii,
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  and the Air Force 2 delivered him that far. Air Force 2 is the Vice President's plane?
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  Yeah, I believe so. The Americans lent that to us. Did they end up in the airspace for him?
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  Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, things always go wrong. It couldn't land at Canberra,
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  because Canberra was equipped to take as long as it wasn't fully laden. It could take a 747.
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  Unbelievably. Unbelievably. I won't elaborate too much, but somebody forgotten
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  or slept through and not got the tower operational. So I, I, I see, I mean, I was transport
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  in the Skyteria. I was pretty unhappy. John Howard had to circle back to Sydney and then catch
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  another plane down. I don't know how the man's stamina took it. And we had to start to grapple.
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  We had immediately went into Cabinet. And we spent a lot of time talking about what had happened.
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  A lot of time talking about the tripping of answers. A lot of time about the emerging evidence
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  that Afghanistan had been training ground central for all this stuff. And that accent,
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  you know, was likely to be there. It had to be taken then, some shape or another. But we also spent
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  a great deal of time working out how we could meet the workers' entitlements
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  for asset workers who'd lost their job. God, talk about wearing a bunch of different hats
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  at the same time. You're dealing with the biggest national security crisis in the generation
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  at the same time as you're trying to save an airline. It's a bit of split screening.
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  Yeah. Well, you know, I often, I messed up that as a person with faith, I was, I was praying.
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  I'll tell you that. And I tell you the thing that I was praying was that I would not fail in
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  some way because there are experts everywhere. But the buckwood still have stopped me,
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  doing with me and those three days or something had gone wrong and Australians have died because
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  I'd missed something. And the other thing that occurred to me was that I just had to put self-interest
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  completely aside. So in the darkest few hours of it, I thought there was a real possibility
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  that this would lead to major economic collapse. You know, it certainly shook foundations. I
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  think in some ways, the origins of the GFC happened then, the loosening up of credit.
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  Of the financial crisis in 2007, 2008, I'm just translating because about half of our listeners
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  are in the US and the GFC is a nice Australian acronym that nobody else understands.
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  Yeah. Well, I think, yeah, sorry. I think the loosening of credit became the,
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  what were they? The jingle loans and all the rest of it in the US. It sort of had its
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  genesis then as governments tried to reassure, you know, the marketplace that the economies would
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  survive this and what have you. And the other thing that kept occurring to me was, you don't,
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  you just have to put self-interest aside. It doesn't matter whether you or your party get minst,
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  what matters here is that I make my responsibilities to the country as best I can.
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  And that's a liberating thing in a way. You put self-interest aside.
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  Hmm. And was there, and I'm not claiming to be here, I'm just saying it was for me very real.
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  I mean, I remember thinking in terms of, well, you know, a captain might want to jump off
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  the bridge and swim for land. Well, I haven't got that option. Yeah. No, I hear you deal with
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  the job at hand. I mean, yeah, yeah, it's your job. And, and were there conversations at the time
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  about what the potential response was likely to be? As you said, Anzus, which is the Australian
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  New Zealand US defense alliance had been invoked, which meant that we were probably going to go to war
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  one way or another. Were there conversations at the time about how, how broad our commitment
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  would be? Or was it that too premature? No, it was premature at that stage. I think by the time
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  John Howard had got back, we'd realized there'd been no follow-ons. I remember him emphasising to
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  us that because he'd been on the ground, it was critical for us to understand that he had seen
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  as in a way that we hadn't how it had stirred the American psyche, how it had stung them,
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  how it had deeply it had hurt them and how resolved or how determined they would be
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  to ensure that it didn't happen again that the perpetrators were appropriately punished.
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  And they're training grounds lost. And I have to be really honest and say this far out,
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  I cannot remember how much detail at that stage we had to discuss around Afghanistan. But
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  of course, it didn't take very long to for that to emerge. Was he shaken? John, do you remember
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  was the Prime Minister shaken when he got back from having been in Washington? Did he say many
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  different? I would say so bad rather than shaken. You saw the quality of the man, he recognised
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  how serious it was. He was enormously so bad, but shaken would be the wrong word. It would be
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  to be unfair. I think he was a leader who knew that the times demanded that he maintain his focus
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  and do his level best. How he fought through the physical exhaustion of it all, I don't know,
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  because like me, he'd been on a different time zone anyway, but he'd been working through
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  night and day. He was on the phone all the time. What can we do about ANSET? What are the real numbers?
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  How do we get people home? He was a model of calm reason, but very sober.
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  Then you were also the acting Prime Minister when 88 Australians lost their lives in a series
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  of terrorist attacks in Australia's number one international holiday destination, barley,
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  about a year after 9-11. What are your recollections of that?
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  No, I wasn't that time. I've seen it written that I was several times, it's entered the mythology
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  somehow. I thought maybe you were just a jinx. I remember hearing a very early morning news
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  of first I heard, I was actually at home on the farm, which I wasn't very often in those days,
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  I have to say. I remember working through my slumber to realise just how serious this was.
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  Of course, Alexander Downer went up there immediately, and I mean him no disrespect at all because
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  he's a very gathered and focused man as well, but I think he really was shaken by what he'd seen
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  because it was so raw still visiting the site and seeing, I don't want to be gory about this,
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  but the evidence of your fellow countrymen scattered all over the place is pretty shake anyone.
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  I remember the parliament was sitting when he went up on the mum days, so I think it was.
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  And on the first day, I got a call from John Early in the morning, the Prime Minister saying,
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  I think I need to go up to Bali and in fairness, I should take Simon Crane, the leader of the
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  opposition because there are many of his side of politics who have been, of course, hurt or killed.
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  Can you look after the shop? That was the expression he often used. Take question time and so forth.
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  And I said, look, can I come around and see you? And I went around and I said,
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  you know, John, look as a political leader, the fact is that a rugby team from a country town
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  had lost a lot of people in that as well, and I felt I needed to go. And he looked at me and said
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  without hesitation, I understand. So the three of us will go. And Peter Costello will guard the shop.
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  And so we flew up on the then brand new Canadian bombardier aircraft. They were quite small.
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  I remember being stunned. We left Canberra, got up there in six hours, ten minutes, we got home
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  in under six hours. But it was a shaking experience. It was absolutely shocking. And to meet
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  with the grieving relatives, still waiting to have bodies identified and so forth, it really does
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  shake you. And I tell you one of the thoughts that I had at the time and it related back to 9,
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  11 and then that. I won't name him. That's because I couldn't pronounce it anyway. But the French
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  foreign minister scoffed. What does this talk of good and evil when you Europeans gave up such
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  basic notions a year, years ago? And I thought, how else do you describe this? If it's not evil,
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  what are our words meaningless? And because there was a front page picture, I've lost contact with
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  him, but a great Australian. And he'd gone up because his mother had gone up there and been killed.
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  Middle-aged lady, he was quite young. And he brought down completely. They had a candle lighting
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  ceremony that deep-out had organized near the site. And it was eerily peaceful and beautiful,
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  I have to say, not so very far from where the mayhem had happened. There was a lot of emotion,
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  a lot of raw emotion in the air. And this young fellow absolutely broke down. And I remember
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  thinking the only human thing to do is to jump up and try and give him a beer hug. And of course,
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  that picture was actually the three of us. It was on the front page of the Australian. I kept it
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  for many years and I sent him a framed copy. But when you see that butchery exercised in the name
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  of some political cause or series of beliefs in such utter disregard for your fellow human beings,
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  that does shake you. Did it shape your ideas about the world and your ideas about the struggles
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  that we would face? Not shape. I mean, philosophically, I'm basically conservative, so I don't
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  believe that human nature over changes, you see. So shape would be the wrong word. Confirm my
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  worst fears about what humanity is capable of, I think, would be the better word. And it takes me
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  to a place where I say, I'm a, as a young man out of university, I just out of university, I read
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  the then great book that everyone was reading, the gulag up to pedagogy. I know everyone quotes it.
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  But there's, he actually references it several times, but Celtson Nixon talks about the dividing line,
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  not between, in one place, he puts it between capture and capture, because he's in a salt mine,
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  prison, man and woman, Catholic and Baptist, black and white, but somewhere across every human heart.
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  And I've always philosophically been very deeply committed to that view that everyone has dignity,
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  everyone has standing, but as Pascal put it, man is at once the, you know, the gem of the universe
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  and the scum of the universe, and each of us are capable of giving way to our better angels,
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  our worst angels, we both have, all of us have both. And so I suppose I would have said I saw
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  it as an ugly and un, I'm not particularly wanted, confirmation of what I essentially believed,
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  the human nature doesn't change. I wish it did. Yeah, but those two events are not just random
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  ejections of human nature. I mean, those two events which happened 12 months apart while you were
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  in a position of power, which were once in a generation level calamities, both came from a specific
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  worldview, a specific ideology, a specific strain of fundamentalism that was on the rise and
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  attempting to make a mark in the world at a moment when you and your peers in other democratic
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  countries around the world were sort of caught asleep at the well, no criticism to you and you
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  on the job. But I'm just wondering if that then shaped your understanding of a clash of civilizations
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  or were you worried that this is going to turn into some massive thing where it's the Muslim
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  world against the rest of us or like that is true. It did shift my thinking. I think it's probably
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  shifted every Australians thinking as we've realized we go back to our earlier conversations where
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  we smug in the after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, thinking the democracies one out had to
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  all be priests and land of milk and honey from now on. That was naive and smug and we've been
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  brutalized by reality, I think, sense. No, I want to put this sensitively. I don't want to get
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  hairs running here, but I do think we have to ask hard questions about why so much of the terrorism
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  we see in the world today seems to be driven or allowed to grow unchecked in Muslim communities.
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  I think that is a major challenge, frankly, for adherence of the Muslim faith. I don't think
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  it can be put any other way. If they don't rise to the challenge, you will see a reaction.
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  You're starting to see it now, I believe, with people being genuinely worried. Why is it that the
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  leaders of this faith are not able to stop the radicalization of their youth, for example? Why
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  they're not able to say when you come to Australia, you leave ancient hatred behind. Why it is that
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  so many of them find it hard to embrace the idea that we are deeply committed to of a democracy,
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  not a theocracy, where we separate the sacred from the secular. It doesn't mean that one can't
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  inform the other. It doesn't, but it means that some things belong to the secular realm. In order,
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  I would think I would argue to free people to explore the sacred. Sometimes people get it wrong,
• 26:30
  I think, in the once Christian West, when they say that, we have to separate the two for the
• 26:37
  sake of government and the community. Actually, the genesis of the idea separating the two,
• 26:44
  saying the secular is a different world, the non-secular comes from that saying of Christ,
• 26:51
  surrender under Caesar, that which is Caesar's government, that which is God's gods. That's where I
• 26:57
  think our philosophical commitment started, at least, to separating the two. But I did have a
• 27:03
  relationship. I mean, they're consistent. I mean, the great thing about a separation of church
• 27:07
  and state is that it serves the person who wants to be wildly religious in their own home,
• 27:11
  as just as much as it serves the person who's an atheist in their own, in their own home. But,
• 27:17
  wouldn't the average Muslim, though, say that they are deeply committed to that idea,
• 27:23
  and that it's a slur on their faith to take the extremists in their midst and argue that that
• 27:33
  derives from something that they're culpable for just because they share a faith in the same way
• 27:37
  that we might bristle at all men being accused of failing the sisterhood for not doing more about,
• 27:45
  I don't know, male murderers or that Christians are responsible for people shooting up abortion
• 27:51
  clinics or whatever. I accept that. And I think that is right. But I think I'm saying that in the
• 27:59
  interests of avoiding, if you feel like, a rising tide of resentment and fear, I do think there
• 28:07
  needs to be a more outspoken rejection from the leaders of the Muslim communities in Western countries,
• 28:17
  if you're not to see the surge of, frankly, fear, which can, phobia is even, which can drive
• 28:24
  unfortunate outcomes. And I think one of the issues that we do have to grapple with, I was quite
• 28:29
  struck by this. It fell to me to meet with Saif Gaddafi when he was in Australia. This was one of
• 28:35
  the times when I was acting P.M. And Woodside wanted petroleum exploration licenses in Libya.
• 28:43
  And at that stage, Libya was coming out of the freezer because Colonel Gaddafi was beginning to
• 28:49
  show some genuine sort of repentance over lockery and so forth. And sorry, who was Saif, was that
• 28:56
  Maumasana or Saif Gaddafi, right? Yes. And he at that stage was studying at L.A.C. and London
• 29:06
  London School of Economics. And I met him very, very sophisticated, striking looking man,
• 29:13
  perfect skin, perfect white teeth in a white suit, open neck to it. Interesting guy, we had quite
• 29:18
  conversation. But I asked him whether in his view, he felt as a practicing Muslim, he could embrace
• 29:28
  democracy, liberal participatory democracy as a term that I used. And over about 45 minutes,
• 29:36
  he explained to me that in the end, no, he couldn't. He believed in a theocracy where the mullahs,
• 29:42
  the judges interpreted the scriptures and so forth of Islamic world and applied them.
• 29:53
  And I suppose the point I would just make, and I'm seeking to make it politely, I'm seeking to
• 29:59
  make it gently. But I'm saying, this is something that needs to be worked through. I think when you
• 30:03
  come to a country that is plainly committed to democracy and you take up citizenship presumably
• 30:08
  because you wanted to come here, it may be a big step for some people, but all of us have to
• 30:13
  take big steps. Is it something we want to do? Because I think we are right to wear ourselves through
• 30:19
  the separation of the sacred from the secular. If it's that intrinsic, then were we wronged on
• 30:27
  to expect what we did out of the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns to expect that we would be able
• 30:33
  to transform those countries into countries that appreciate that distinction?
• 30:38
  It's a very good question and I don't dismiss it. I think what I would say is that there were
• 30:44
  centuries. I had the opportunity to put that very question, it was in present tense, not past at
• 30:51
  the time, to the then president of the United States, George Bush. I ask him a very question,
• 30:58
  do you think people who have a something of a commitment to the idea of theocracy can embrace
• 31:05
  participatory democracy as we understand it? And he said, perhaps not as we understand it,
• 31:10
  but once we were not called candidates for democracy either. Now that is true. It's absolutely
• 31:15
  true. It took years, centuries to evolve. I can add a story about that talking to some young
• 31:23
  Burmese or me and me Mark, how would you say it? I use Burma because I don't like military junta
• 31:29
  as being able to tell me what to say. Well, this was the point three terrific young people I met
• 31:35
  in Yangon about 10 years ago at the time when the generals looked up that they were going to allow
• 31:41
  for general elections, which as you know, they did and it all went wrong, but they came to me
• 31:46
  at their academics. And they said to me, we're deeply frustrated. How, if we're given the
• 31:53
  opportunity, we think the generals are going to give us a go at democracy again. We think this time
• 31:58
  they really will do it. And they're quite exasperated. How do we build a modern economy? How do we
• 32:02
  build a parliament? How do we build democratic traditions? How do we build a judiciary? How do we
• 32:07
  build an education system? How do we build a health system? And I remember thinking,
• 32:16
  hell, where do I go with this? Because, and I said to them, I blurted out and took the west's
• 32:20
  centuries to do it all. The trouble is a bit like Ernest Hemingway's sort of warning when
• 32:26
  somebody said to him, what's it like going broke after he'd gone bankrupt at one point in time?
• 32:32
  And he said, well, it happens slowly at first and it happens with terrifying speed at the end.
• 32:36
  And I do worry about our loss, if you like, of our foundational beliefs. So back to your question,
• 32:46
  I think, can I put it this way? I think some people were probably more realistic about the extent
• 32:50
  to which those cultures would embrace our models of democratic freedom than others were.
• 32:58
  And perhaps we've learned a lot of lessons in very hard ways.
• 33:02
  And the big thing is to learn those lessons, isn't it? You know, as Churchill said, if you
• 33:08
  presented with fresh evidence, as you learn going through life, you'd be very responsible not
• 33:13
  to change your mind. I mean, there was a bit of evidence from Afghanistan at the time of the
• 33:18
  lead up to the Iraq war that maybe the thing would be more difficult than some people had said.
• 33:23
  What do you remember of the conversations in the lead up in the months before the Iraq war?
• 33:29
  Did you ever have any niggling reservation in your head going, I don't know, what if it all goes
• 33:35
  pear-shaped? Well, you do. You go backwards and forwards and again, going back to our earlier point,
• 33:43
  and leadership you sometimes recognize that if you get it wrong or it goes to custom,
• 33:48
  you know, you can, there's figuratively speaking, luckily you have a democracy like ours,
• 33:52
  your head. And these things become an on-balance proposition, I suppose.
• 33:59
  Afghanistan, to me, seemed the priority there was to try and ensure that it was not a training
• 34:06
  gown for central training ground folk, for terrorism anymore. That was a more open and shut case.
• 34:12
  Iraq, well, I suppose people sort of still sometimes say you couldn't have believed it,
• 34:22
  but I did. I did believe that the story is about the weapons of mass destruction. And I would note
• 34:28
  in my own defense that even the French who didn't join in at that time said, oh, there's no doubt
• 34:32
  that they exist. And of course, we've never found them. So do you learn from those sorts of things?
• 34:38
  Yes. Unfortunately, it does seem to me that we've dissipated our energy, we've become a little more
• 34:46
  inward looking and uncertain. And maybe that's affecting our resolve when it comes to the
• 34:53
  enormous dangers now presented by Iran in particular. Just, I want to get to Iran. I want to get to
• 34:59
  the Middle East and the future, but just on this question of Iraq, were there, when did it become
• 35:06
  apparent to you that Australia's involvement was a fail to complete? I couldn't put a date on
• 35:14
  it now. I'd really, honestly, it's such a long time ago. Because there was, the reason I ask
• 35:18
  is because there was quite a period of time there where I remember that the Prime Minister would
• 35:23
  be asked about it almost every single day. And he would say, well, I'm not going to answer a hypothetical
• 35:29
  question. I mean, when there is a, you know, a request for assistance made to us by the Americans,
• 35:34
  then we will evaluate that request, which is sort of a way of just dodging the question really.
• 35:39
  And saying like the only point at which we're allowed to have the conversation is the point at which
• 35:44
  it's too late to have the conversation because we've already accepted the request. Or, you know,
• 35:47
  we've got three minutes in order to say yes or no. And I'm wondering if you have any recollections
• 35:52
  of when you were brought into that loop or whether the Prime Minister ever can't your office or called
• 35:56
  you to his and was like, listen, this is going to happen. So we have to kind of get ready for it.
• 36:03
  Look at the, there was a moment. I just can't remember where on the calendar that actually happened.
• 36:08
  I'd have to go back to the archives for that. But there was a moment at which, you know,
• 36:13
  the Prime Minister told Cabinet that we've had the, here is the request. But prior to the request.
• 36:21
  Sorry. But prior to the request. No, no, no, when the request came. Right. Right. But I mean,
• 36:27
  there were weeks or months prior to the request where everybody knew that it was going to happen
• 36:31
  and everybody knew that we were going to be involved. And it felt like the government was dodging
• 36:35
  responsibility for a decision that had already been made. So I'm just curious about, if you don't
• 36:40
  remember, that's fine. But I'm curious about if you remember where your head was at, where it was
• 36:44
  like we're doing this thing, but we can't really talk about it. And we don't know exactly what it's
• 36:49
  going to be. No, I don't shy away from the reality that it was, you pray for a miracle,
• 36:54
  but you don't think it's going to happen. And, you know, it became obvious after the,
• 37:01
  you know, the various interactions and the pressure that was being applied to, to Iraq at the time,
• 37:07
  if the sedan has seen that we were not going to get clarity that action was going to happen.
• 37:12
  That Britain and America were determined that we had an important responsibility to recognize
• 37:19
  global realities that if we needed the help of bigger countries, something went wrong in our
• 37:27
  region. We had to be a reliable ally. So, I mean, that's the way I saw it. And it was with great
• 37:34
  reluctance. I mean, I understand that, you know, there was a lot of posturing going on. And I
• 37:38
  remember being peppered with questions about the coalition of the willing and is it real and
• 37:42
  is it happening? And where do we sit in it and come on, you know, all the rest of it, the shy
• 37:47
  acting that goes on in the parliament. And I think all I can tell you is that the time came,
• 37:54
  and the prime minister said, well, we have a request before us. We have to make a decision.
• 37:58
  And the decision was made to go. Was that unanimous?
• 38:06
  It seemed so to me at the time. There have been one or two who have suggested that they didn't
• 38:11
  support it since, but at that time, yes, it did. And about 18 months into the Iraq war, you made
• 38:19
  headlines because you were giving an interview and they, the interviewer asked whether or not
• 38:23
  you thought that Australia's involvement in the Iraq war had increased the risk of terrorism
• 38:28
  in Australia. And to your credit, you were honest about it. And you said that it probably had.
• 38:33
  But then the opposition jumped on that and said, see, the Iraq war was a terrible mistake.
• 38:38
  It's made us more vulnerable, not stronger. And you issued a statement retracting and trying
• 38:43
  to clarify it. Do you think that you were right the first time when you shouldn't have released
• 38:48
  the subsequent follow-up statement? I think you could make that charge, but I think the view
• 38:56
  that I really held was that if we didn't confront, if we didn't stand up, we were all going
• 39:03
  to be greater targets anyway. Yeah, I mean, I think you were right to say the first point,
• 39:11
  and also merely making yourself a target for terrorists would not be a good reason to not do
• 39:17
  something like, you know, I mean, you can't shy away from the fight if you thought that's my
• 39:22
  broader point. Yeah, my broader point when I made those comments, but they were a bit ambiguous,
• 39:27
  ambiguous, if I'm honest. It was on Lorry Oaks. I think the point that I would make is that I felt
• 39:33
  that the greater good was to be found in being honest and in tackling these problems and not
• 39:39
  showing away from them. And that any, any intense battle can involve some short-term dangers,
• 39:48
  but if you're clear-sighted and you believe in the cause, it's in the interests of a longer
• 39:54
  term piece and better outcomes. And when you say if you believe in the cause, was the cause that
• 39:59
  you were believing in the Righteousness of the Iraq War or the importance of maintaining the US
• 40:06
  alliance? I would have said really more the former, you know, the what I saw as a battle against,
• 40:14
  really in that case, you know, the sort of totalitarianism and what looked to be the extraordinary
• 40:19
  cruelty of that particular regime. I was very troubled by the way they treated their own people.
• 40:25
  This is a hard one that still is in my own mind, but to what extent do we try and play global
• 40:30
  policeman, not just in our own interests, but in the interests of people who are living in
• 40:35
  regimes that are cruel and horrible to their own people? I really struggle with that. I still do.
• 40:41
  I mean, certainly, if you look at the conditions that Iraqis and Syrians have had to endure and
• 40:47
  that people in the Middle East have had to endure after the Iraq War, you could, you could make the
• 40:51
  case that the Iraq War didn't help, you know, and that the conditions subsequently, including the
• 40:57
  rise of ISIS and other things that can be at least tangentially linked back to the collapse
• 41:02
  of Saddam Hussein's regime, not to mention the emboldening of Iran who benefited greatly
• 41:07
  from the removal of Saddam Hussein that in the long run, and I suppose in the long run we're all
• 41:12
  dead, but in the long run, you know, maybe it was not a net positive.
• 41:18
  Always wise to be high, you know, easy to be wise in hindsight. I don't mean that as a cheek
• 41:23
  rejoinder, Jos, I just mean, you know, you just don't know how these things are going to unfold
• 41:30
  and you make on-balance decisions and then stand by them. You know, I often think the model of courage
• 41:36
  in many ways in the modern era must have been eyes and how, you know, pacing up and down endlessly
• 41:46
  considering whether to launch D-Day and having a delay because of storms and then they're told
• 41:52
  the meteorologist tell them there's a window, they'd better go, he writes out a letter accepting
• 41:57
  full blame of it goes wrong, makes the decision to go knowing that there's a considerable chance that
• 42:04
  the whole thing will go to custard completely. Now the judgments of hindsight would have been
• 42:09
  vastly differently knew that, even had gone wrong. But his motivations, I think, were right,
• 42:16
  and I would argue that our motivations were right. And, you know, without denying that it's
• 42:24
  possible that a view would have relived those times in the light of what you subsequently know,
• 42:29
  you might make different decisions. And on jihadist extremism, just the last point on this and then
• 42:37
  we can get to today. But if I told you back then, in the wake of 9-11 and barley and Iraq imploding
• 42:47
  that we'd be sitting here in 2024, and the world would thankfully largely have escaped any
• 42:53
  subsequent large-scale terrorist attack. Now, there have been a few tragedies that we can all think
• 42:59
  of in between now and then paraspatter clan attacks, the London bombings, but that the world would
• 43:06
  basically be at peace inside Western liberal democracies. Would you have believed that?
• 43:15
  It's a good question. I suppose I would say that one thing I would say is that it's not been
• 43:24
  so much luck as I actually think that the resourcing of skilled men and women in our security
• 43:34
  apparatuses in the Western world should be recognized as having been highly effective.
• 43:41
  I touched on that earlier. I mean, I think I stand in awe of the competence and the capability
• 43:48
  of our security people, and I suspect it would have been a lot worse if they hadn't been there.
• 43:54
  So I don't put it down to chance or luck. Would I believe that we would still be where we,
• 44:01
  oh yeah, I think I probably could have. What I couldn't have foreseen that is the way that we
• 44:07
  become so divided as a people and so self-doubting about our own democratic and free enterprise
• 44:13
  traditions. That's the thing that really amazes me. Can you put your finger on that? Where do you see
• 44:19
  that showing up? Oh, everywhere. It seems to me that we now face a world that is quite dangerous in
• 44:27
  the sense that we face external dangers and internal challenges as well. So as a friend of mine
• 44:35
  said the other day to me in a private conversation, he said it rather seems to me now that we face
• 44:41
  challenges from not four but five totalitarian entities in a loose sense. You've got China,
• 44:49
  you've got Russia, you've got North Korea, you've got Iran, but now you have an amalgam between
• 44:54
  G-Hartists and activists in our own communities. Look at our universities. This is extraordinary.
• 45:02
  I would never have foreseen that. You don't make a distinction between people who have a reflexive
• 45:08
  instinct to back the underdog and regard Palestinians as the underdog as a colonized people
• 45:15
  and people who are sympathetic to G-Hartism. I think that there are too many people who are
• 45:23
  turning a blind eye to the reality that Hamas terrorist organisations started this and it's
• 45:29
  Hamas who could stop it and who are glossing over the utter barbarity, the subhuman treatment
• 45:41
  of the 1200 Jewish people who were slaughtered and those who were taken prisoner.
• 45:45
  If you look at what's happening on our university campuses, I don't see how you can not say
• 45:56
  just who are you aligning yourself with? Well, they'd say they're aligning themselves with the
• 46:01
  Palestinian babies and women and children who are being killed. I mean, Hamas started it if you
• 46:05
  start the clock on October 7th, but start the clock in 2008 with the expansion of Israeli settlements,
• 46:11
  the election of Benjamin Netanyahu, 15 subsequent years of refusal to engage in peace, start the
• 46:17
  clock in 67, start the clock in 48, start the clock 5,000 years ago with the Kingdom of King David.
• 46:23
  It's an intractable problem. I think that the people on university campuses would say we
• 46:28
  have poor terrorism and it's an untenable situation to force an entire nation of people to live in
• 46:34
  squalid open air refugee camps in perpetuity. But to call it genocide, that's inexcusable,
• 46:40
  it's not genocide. If they'd wanted to wipe out the people of Palestine, they could have done
• 46:46
  the number of people who live in Palestine has gone up and up and up and up. We forget that Israel
• 46:52
  is a prosperous democracy where people live through a much higher standard. The Garsens could have
• 46:56
  done the same. They could have been a new Singapore if they wanted to, if they'd adopted a different
• 47:01
  approach, but they haven't. They elected Hamas. They have had four opportunities to embrace a
• 47:07
  two-state solution. They've rejected them all. Israel, on the other hand, is a place where
• 47:14
  there are Arab members in the judiciary. There are two million Arabs who live there. There are
• 47:18
  Arabs in the parliament. I can't see the Garsens welcoming of the Jewish people in that same way
• 47:25
  at all. And then there's the poison that's inculcated in the children from a very early age,
• 47:33
  which we appear to have imported to Australia now, with the evidence that a baker in the western
• 47:39
  suburbs of Sydney has been baking some horrendous cakes and so forth for a four-year-old,
• 47:47
  celebrating terrorism and terrorists themselves. So I'm afraid I'm remained very deeply concerned
• 47:56
  by what I see as a rise in anti-Semitism, which is hidden behind criticism of Israel. Now that
• 48:03
  criticism can be legitimate, but it is plainly being used to hide a rising tide on the part of
• 48:11
  many people of anti-Semitism. It is utterly unacceptable in Australia today that Jewish people
• 48:17
  living here, good citizens belonging to a group of people who have made an enormous contribution.
• 48:21
  They're greatest general. Some of our best politicians, two governors general, the arts,
• 48:26
  business that they should feel unsafe in their own country.
• 48:32
  Well, that's what I mean, this divisiveness, this coming together of radical jihadism,
• 48:39
  and the forces or many people who would regard themselves as progressive,
• 48:46
  and you know, you've recently been with Douglas Murray, nobody points out more clearly than he
• 48:51
  does how unacceptable this is. And that is perfectly obvious that people do not, many of these young
• 48:57
  people do not know their history. If they did, they'd know the word genocide was coined
• 49:03
  for the attempt of the Nazis backed by a lot of people around the world, including
• 49:07
  plenty in the Middle East, to actually exterminate the German people. They are Jewish people.
• 49:13
  Yes, no matter how many Americans are raised. Look, my grandmother came to Australia as a refugee
• 49:18
  from the Holocaust. She was Jewish. You know, this is a matter that's dear to my heart. I am
• 49:25
  struggling with the extent to which what we're seeing in Australia and all over the
• 49:31
  world is jihadist, sympathizing anti-Semitism and the extent to which it's a kind of a lazy,
• 49:41
  reflexive way of feeling like you're on the right side of history by framing things into a
• 49:51
  sort of off-the-shelf narrative where there are oppressors and oppressed people.
• 49:56
  The people who have whiter skin and are wearing suits and have more money and have expensive
• 50:01
  bombs are generally the bad guys. The people living in rubble who have brown skin are generally
• 50:07
  the good guys and we carry a kind of post-colonial guilt almost where the the easiest sort of
• 50:14
  heuristic is one in which the Israelis would would automatically be bad because they're
• 50:19
  Western colonizers and the Palestinians would automatically be good because they're
• 50:24
  poorer and more historically shatter upon. And you know, maybe this is just me telling myself
• 50:29
  stories because I don't want to believe that there's as much anti-Semitism as there might be.
• 50:33
  But that for me is a cleaner explanation for what's going on than to call an anti-Semitism.
• 50:40
  Well, you refer to the you know, the victim and victim maker, victim maker making
• 50:48
  sort of division between good and evil. We touched on where good and evil align really
• 50:52
  passes earlier on now in this simplistic model that's come out of our universities.
• 50:57
  Who would ever have thought that critical theory would take off in places of learning across the
• 51:01
  West? On what basis? Does this often nonsense pass any academic examination, any rigor at all?
• 51:10
  You know, dividing people into good and bad based on whether or not you are white and wealthy
• 51:16
  or whether you're dark skinned and less fortunate. And I go back to my point about less fortunate by
• 51:20
  the way. I mean, again, I think it was Douglas Murray who pointed out that guards have could have
• 51:25
  been another Singapore if it had chosen to. You know, why are they living in the squire? The
• 51:30
  wider they have the same living standards as he is right these next door. And maybe it's got a lot
• 51:35
  to do with not being a democracy. And you know, living in oppression and fear and a situation where
• 51:44
  their children are simply indoctrinated to hate another class of people based on race from the
• 51:50
  early days of school. But you know, that victim, victim maker, oppressor, coloniser model,
• 51:59
  A, it just simply doesn't fit the Jewish people. No people have been more oppressed than the
• 52:04
  Jewish people down through history. Racism is hatred of another person, usually based on racial
• 52:10
  characteristics. Has anyone been more consistently the victim of racism than the Jewish people
• 52:16
  down through the ages? And after the Second World War, was it not understandable that given that
• 52:22
  people of every other creed had a country they could call home, as Alexander Downer points out,
• 52:27
  what's a 85 or so nations that have sort of broadly Christian origins, maybe 55 or so Muslim
• 52:34
  origins. There's one Jewish state and guess which one, you know, progressives and activists want
• 52:42
  to get rid of the one Jewish state. I mean, the reason I think it's a bigger problem than
• 52:49
  anti-Semitism, John, is that it shows up in so many different areas of our conversational life.
• 52:54
  And it's one of the reasons why I parted ways with the ABC last year. On a number of issues,
• 53:00
  since one of the reasons why you have your podcast, I imagine, on a number of issues, there's a set
• 53:06
  way of talking about things that is endorsed by a certain class of university educated middle
• 53:12
  class, mostly white elite, that sets the ground rules for how we think about things. And this idea of
• 53:20
  there being oppressors and oppressed, you know, a historical legacy of white supremacy that we're
• 53:27
  all living inside of, of patriarchy and so on, it has found a way of essentially contaminating
• 53:35
  all of our conversations. So it's very difficult to be feared income about problems, not just with
• 53:40
  regard to Israel, but with regard to gender or sexuality or race or First Nations issues, without
• 53:48
  either conforming to a sort of set of social justice dogmas or becoming what I would think I was
• 53:54
  being a reactionary sky news host or a, you know, Murdoch columnist, neither of which I care to be,
• 54:02
  but the middle ground is a difficult place to occupy at the moment. And I wonder what you make of
• 54:08
  that trend, if it's a trend that you agree with, and if so, why it's happening? Well, I genuinely
• 54:13
  believe you never get good public policy out of a truncated or silenced or distorted debate.
• 54:20
  I also believe that A&HCR, they had a very important and powerful point to make when
• 54:25
  she said we're in danger of turning our democracies into democracies. And then Thomas Sol made the
• 54:31
  comment that the problem is not that little Johnny can't think he can think or write. The problem
• 54:36
  is not that little Johnny can't feel. He can feel alright. The problem is that he thinks of feeling
• 54:41
  is thinking. And there's, R.A.G. is marked by almost hysterical emotionalism if anybody dares to
• 54:48
  disagree with you. And in some ways that's tied up with identity politics. It's tied up with the
• 54:54
  idea that we've inculcated in our young people, the idea that there's a centre of not just the
• 54:59
  university, the universe. We've got over our own lives. So if you in any way challenge my thinking,
• 55:06
  you are challenging my identity and my dignity and worth as a human being. It's in direct
• 55:12
  contradistinctions of the old line attributed to, they're not actually spoken as I understand it by
• 55:17
  Boltaire, that I may disagree with you, but I would defend of the death you're right to say it.
• 55:22
  In other words, you show the other person enough respect as a fellow human being to say,
• 55:27
  I won't personalise this debate. And you shouldn't personalise our discussion. We will talk about
• 55:34
  the facts and we will try and agree if necessary somewhere in the middle or agree to disagree or
• 55:40
  will come the complete common ground. All of that is being lost. And I suspect that in part,
• 55:48
  it's because we've actually lost the ability to communicate properly. And I think social media
• 55:53
  is accelerating that. It's giving us means to communicate, which is second to none. Brilliant.
• 55:58
  Fantastic use the right way. But use the wrong way. It actually deprives us of the ability to engage
• 56:09
  humanly. And I think you and all of our listeners will know that there have been times when we've
• 56:15
  sat opposite people at a dinner table or something where we felt rising emotions as we disagree with
• 56:21
  them and had to, you know, you will because you're a civilised human being. And I try to,
• 56:28
  you have to suppress those feelings of anger. And so, well, I must respect this person's point of
• 56:33
  view. And if I'm concerned about their perspectives, what I ought to do rather than go at them like a
• 56:38
  battering ram is ask them the polite questions. Why do you think that way? Why do you believe that?
• 56:43
  Have you heard the alternative view? Can you understand that I see it differently? Sometimes questions
• 56:48
  are better ways of respectfully engaging, I think, in that circumstance. But I suppose at its
• 56:55
  most base, Josh, I would say to you that I think the biggest single driver of this is the abandonment
• 57:04
  of the idea that came from the Judeo-Christian heritage that a higher authority has said whether
• 57:14
  I like you or not's not relevant to you have worth and dignity because a higher authority says
• 57:19
  you have, all as Robert Menzies put it, all souls are equal in the eyes of heaven. And I think in
• 57:25
  in rejecting and no longer understanding that sort of concept, it feeds the tribalism. I am
• 57:33
  God over me in my life. I will do as I please. Everything belongs to me, including my body. If you
• 57:39
  dare to offend that in any way, then I will take you on. And one of the great problems that goes with
• 57:46
  it is Rabbi Jonathan Sachs observed is that we've lost the ability to forgive. We've lost the
• 57:52
  capacity to understand that we're not always right. That sometimes it's our fault that we will
• 57:58
  want to be forgiven and therefore we ought to forgive others. I think that's really important. I
• 58:03
  actually said to me, what happens when you forget how to forgive? And he said, well, that's really
• 58:09
  difficult in a social media age because things can be dredged up for decades later. And the outright
• 58:15
  archaeology, as I call it, yeah. I mean, so would you call yourself a free speech defender?
• 58:24
  Yes, I would. I would, but I would make this reservation.
• 58:29
  To hear the rest of this conversation, go to uncomfortableconversations.substac.com slash listen and you
• 58:35
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• 58:42
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• 58:53
  rest. Well, let your phone light down. And so, to uncomfortable conversations of Insomstac.