The Joe Walker Podcast - The Life and Times of a Thoroughly liberal Prime Minister - Malcolm Turnbull

Episode Date: April 24, 2020

Malcolm Turnbull was Australia's 29th Prime Minister.Show notesSelected links •Follow Malcolm Turnbull: Website | Twitter •A Bigger Picture, by Malcolm Turnbull •Malcolm's speech at the 2010 Deakin Lectures •Malcolm's speech at the 2010 BZE Stationary Energy Plan launch •'Condolence on the Death of Robert Hughes', 2012 speech by Malcolm Turnbull •Malcolm's 2015 speech challenging Tony Abbott's leadership •The Fiery Chariot, by Lucille Iremonger •Reflections on the Revolution in France, by Edmund Burke •The Case for Conservatism, by Quintin Hogg •The Reluctant Republic, by Malcolm Turnbull •Fighting For the Republic, by Malcolm Turnbull •Constitutional Advancement in a Frozen Continent: Essays in honour of George Winterton •'An Alternative Republic Proposal', Anne Twomey's 2015 article in the ALJ •Skin in the Game, by Nassim Taleb •Antifragile, by Nassim TalebTopics discussed •Which of Malcolm's speeches is he most proud of? 9:52 •Malcolm's childhood. 12:51 •Burkean Conservatism. 20:20 •How do governments know when they're reforming too quickly or too slowly? 26:11 •Resolving the core tension in the Australian Republican Movement. 42:59 •Same-sex marriage. 48:48 •The Minority Rule. 52:19 •Is the Liberal Party philosophically tenable? 59:35 •How does Malcolm assess prospective tech investments? 1:04:24 •Malcolm's intellectual shift on China. 1:07:19 •Malcolm's struggle with depression and suicidal thoughts. 1:11:42 •Antifragility. 1:15:48See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Blinkist premium free for seven days. That's www.blinkist.com slash swagman. You're listening to the Jolly Swagman podcast. Here's your host, Joe Walker. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the show. We have a very special guest this episode. Rhodes Scholar, journalist, barrister, merchant banker, and venture capitalist, Malcolm Turnbull was Australia's 29th Prime Minister from 2015 to 2018. He entered Parliament in 2004 at the age of 50. By no means a professional politician, Malcolm entered Parliament with an abundance of experience and

F.U. money. His career prior to politics was kaleidoscopic. In-house lawyer to Kerry Packer at the age of 28, he successfully defended the media mogul against the Costigan Commission. At the age of 32, Malcolm defeated the British government in the Spycatcher trial, then the highest profile Australian case. In the 1990s, his investment banking firm, Turnbull & Partners, turned a $500,000 investment in OzEmail into nearly $60 million in the space of four years, selling its equity stake for cash before the peak of the dot-com bubble. From 1993 to 2000, Malcolm was chair of the Australian Republican Movement.

He became chair and managing director of Goldman Sachs Australia and a Goldman partner. And just to demonstrate his policy stripes, he became director of the Menzies Research Centre in 2001. To many observers, Malcolm seemed destined for the prime ministership, a destiny he finally manifested on the 15th of September 2015. And yet, I don't think it's surly or controversial to state that Malcolm's legacy as prime minister is unlikely to jut out from the history books. He didn't achieve as much in the job as he wanted to. So, how did a man endowed with Malcolm's talents have his full prime ministerial potential so cruelly circumscribed? In part, he simply wasn't given enough time, ousted by his own party as he was on the 24th of August 2018.

Malcolm would argue, probably fairly, that he achieved a great deal relative to the almost three years that he was given. But equally, his activist instincts and policy options were constrained by the right wing of his party, the same small but intransigent minority that incited his deposal. In this conversation, we discuss that dynamic and whether Malcolm thinks the Liberal Party itself is philosophically tenable going forward. In the final analysis, we can be thankful to Malcolm for two things. First, he was a highly competent leader of the executive who adhered to what I think should be the first rule of government. That is, he never stuffed up badly. As Malcolm observes at the end of his new memoir, quote, looking back, I'm relieved that I didn't make one of those political mistakes, the consequences of which are almost impossible to reverse, like invading Iraq in 2003, or holding the Brexit referendum,

or allowing a million Syrian refugees to walk into Germany, end quote. Second, we can be grateful for Malcolm's modest but not insignificant reform legacy. It includes the legalization of same-sex marriage, Snowy Hydro 2.0 and the Tasmanian Battery of the Nation, the city's agenda, and keeping the TPP alive to single out just a few of his government's achievements. I suspect these will all age very well. At least if you're an Australian, you will have heard a lot from Malcolm recently, and you will hear more over the next few weeks. He's currently promoting his new autobiography, A Bigger Picture, which was released on Monday, the 20th of April. I was lucky to get an advanced copy and I really enjoyed it. Genuinely the most entertaining political or at least prime ministerial autobiography that I've read.

And if you're an audiobook fan, it's even better as Malcolm reads it himself. Now, in this conversation, I wanted to do something a bit different to the repetitive, short-form media interviews Malcolm has been doing. Unfortunately, my chat with Malcolm was cut short by about 30 minutes before we began, but we still had a generous amount of time. In the conversation, I probe Malcolm's political philosophy and test him on a few key issues, including the Republic, China, and the future of the Liberal Party. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

So without much further ado, here is Malcolm Turnbull. Malcolm Turnbull, welcome to the show. It's great to be with you, Jason. It's an honour to speak with you. I've been looking forward to this conversation for weeks, but in a way I feel like I've been preparing for it for years. I still remember the precise moment you entered into my consciousness. It was at school and I was selected to speak in the Lawrence Campbell Oratory.

What year was that, Chas? In 2009. And I remember John Summers, the English coordinator, said, you know, you should really look at the speeches of Malcolm Turnbull. He's far and above the best orator we have in Parliament at the moment. So, I started following your career in earnest from that point and three of your speeches really stuck with me. The first was a speech you gave at the Alfred Deakin lectures in June 2010 on the politics of climate change. The second was a speech you gave during the 2010 federal election campaign at a packed Sydney town hall at the launch of Beyond Zero Emissions stationary energy plan.

And the third speech that I loved was, of course, your 2012 eulogy for your uncle-in-law, the famed art critic Bob Hughes, which you delivered in the parliament. And I was reflecting a few days ago in preparation for this conversation on why I enjoyed those three speeches in particular. And I think it was your congruence, the total alignment between your intent, your emotions, your tone and your words. But I wanted to ask you, do you have a speech that you're most proud of from an oratorical standpoint? You know, I haven't really thought about that. I've given a lot of speeches in my life. So I would say the one, the condolence

about Bob, I remember very well. It was quite an emotional time, but it was one of those speeches which is both sad but joyous because we were both mourning his passing and celebrating his life and that huge personality. Yeah, look, I'd be hard-pressed. I'd have to think about that, Joseph. I can't think of one that stands out. I mean, often the most powerful speeches are the shorter ones and the ones that are extemporary.

So, you know, the remarks I made when I announced my challenge to Abbott, that was a good short speech. And, you know, the various speeches I've given on climate change have been, I think, effective speeches. So, yeah, look, it's a good question. It's a good question. Maybe I'll, at some point in the future publish a collection of speeches.

I've set out extracts from them in my book, but, you know, you've got to, you, I've generally just set out short bits. I mean, there was a good speech I gave about civil liberties, that Magna Carta speech I gave not long before I became PM, which is a good speech, I think, in terms of a good piece of advocacy. But yeah, anyway, the Shangri-La speech I gave, the Shangri-La dialogue must have been in 2017. 2017. Yeah, that certainly has been well received as a foreign policy address. Yeah.

I read in your autobiography in a diary entry that you wrote on New Year's Eve 2015, you were actually reflecting on the challenge speech to Tony Abbott, and you wrote, quote, I probably gave the best speech of my career when I challenged Abbott, that five minutes in the courtyard. I need to do that more often. I'm too wordy and I need to think carefully about the points I want to make and distill them. It doesn't take long, but it needs some discipline. End quote. I always say no one's ever given a bad short speech. But no, I think your style is definitely, I don't want to say florid, but wordy and lyrical.

So Malcolm, I want to delve into your background a little. You were born in 1954. What was your father's profession? Bruce was a hotel broker for much of his life and he'd been an apprentice electrician and he'd been a salesman. He's a salesman for most of his life, but for pretty much all his working life. But he'd been a hotel broker for, I think, pretty much all my life. And what was your mother's profession? Well, my mother was a writer. She was an actress and a writer.

She wrote poetry. She wrote novels. But she really made her name in her youth as a writer of radio serials. You know, in the days before television in particular, you know, radio serials were a big deal. And, you know, Mum would, she wrote stacks and stacks of them. Coral Lansbury was her name. And she wrote hundreds and hundreds of radio serials.

You described your parents' relationship as miserable. What was so miserable about it? Well, they just weren't really well suited, Joe. You know, my mother was a very bookish, is that the right term? She was certainly a very literary person. She was, you know, she came from a theatrical family. She was an actor to begin with and then a writer. And her friends, you know, she had her friends were sort of literary people, theatrical people.

And my dad was much more of an outdoor sporty person. He was kind of the class. He was like the idealised Australian man. He was, you know, he was a great swimmer and surfer and runner and footballer and rider and, you know. Like Tony Abbott. No, he wasn't at all like that. But he was very, you know, they just didn't have a lot of interests in common.

And I think, you know, what happened was that they met. And after my mother's brief marriage to George Edwards ended, she got married to a much older man when she was about 21, I think. And he died not long after they got married. And the young widow was consoled by my father, and I was the outcome. And so they got married after that, but it was never a very happy marriage.

And how would you describe your relationship with your mum? Well, she was the best, I felt, the best imaginable mother until she left me. So she was great until she left. And she left sort of in stages, but she basically got involved with a guy called John Salmon, who was a historian at the University of New South Wales where she was also teaching. And they then went off to New Zealand and they, well, he got a post in New Zealand and she moved over there with him. So by the time I was 10, she was pretty much,

well, she basically left when I was nine. But it was always a little bit unclear because my father was absolutely determined to persuade me to ensure that I did not resent her in any way at all so he spoke warmly about her he never criticized. He always told me that she was the best mother in the world, that she loved me more than anything on earth. And he, you know, somehow or other managed to ensure that I never resented her for leaving us. But the circumstances in which she left were pretty unedifying in a lot of ways. I mean, we were living in a flat in New Southhead Road in Bourkelews, which was sold. And, you know, mum had, because she was earning much more than my father, so she

sold it and took the, you know, the bulk of the proceeds or all the proceeds, as far as I'm aware, and pretty much all the furniture. So it was, there it was. Incredible discipline by Bruce not to criticize her in your presence. Yeah, it was very, it's very unusual. You know, most divorces, the parents sort of fighting, you know, fight. The children are a battleground. But Bruce was very careful not to do that. There's a 1970 book by Lucille Iremonger called The Fiery Chariot,

a study of British prime ministers in the search for love. And she finds that a striking percentage of British prime ministers between 1809 and 1937 had lost a parent in childhood. At uni, Malcolm, I worked in Andrew Lee's office. I suggested the book for his own book, The Lack of Politics, which was published in 2015, and Andrew and I updated that statistic and at that time we found that 17 of the past 37 British prime ministers had lost a parent in childhood, which was a rate three times higher than in the general population. Andrew would certainly agree with me that at best it's an interesting

and highly speculative theory that reduces a very complex matter. But reflecting on your own life and motivations, do you think that concept holds any water? Well, what's the concept? What's the proposition? What's the... The proposition, I thought you were aware of the book. The proposition is that...

Oh, Andrew's book. No, The Fiery Chariot. Annabelle Crabbe talks about it sometimes. Oh, I know. Right. But the proposition is that um you know the the lack of love in their childhoods is what propelled british prime ministers into public life in order to kind of um fill that need yeah i don't know i mean i didn't i didn't feel i had a lack of love in my father, to be honest. I mean, my father, you know, my father sort of made up

for my mother's absence and persuaded me that it was, I mean, he was brilliant. He persuaded me, you know, in defiance of the fact that she loved me more than anything. And, you know, and we used to correspond uh we used to write to each other obviously but in those days we used to send each other uh audio tapes so uh you know coral would sit down and chat or chat away to me and tell me all her news and maybe, you know, read a chapter of a book and then I would, you know, do the same thing and send a tape back to her.

So that's, yeah, that probably sounds pretty archaic compared to not. Malcolm, in one of the speeches of yours that I mentioned, the one you gave at Sydney Town Hall at the launch of Beyond Zero Emissions stationary energy plan, you paraphrased Edmund Burke from his book Reflections on the Revolution in France, where he discusses the hazards of people destroying traditions and inherited customs and institutions. The full quote of Burke's is, quoting, By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often and as much and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the Commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.

Ends quote. For most people, the label Burkean conservative probably doesn't leap to mind when thinking about your politics, but I rather think it's a very good description of your worldview. Do you agree with that? And what does Burkean conservatism mean to you? Well, you know, I think that conservatism, properly described, is well exemplified by Burke. There is, well, you know, set out by Edmund Burke.

There is also a book that is not very well known or well read, but a book that had a lot of influence on my political thinking was curiously a book by Quentin Hogg, a Penguin book called The Case for Conservatism, which he wrote in the lead up to the, I think, the first election after the Second World War in the UK, but it would have been in the early 50s. The book, and there was a Labor, you know, politician wrote a similar small book, you

know, for the Labor case. Now, much of the Quentin Hogg's book, Case for Conservatism, is dealing with the politics of the day and there's very little interest today. But the first five or six chapters are more philosophical ones and he is absolutely channelling Edmund Burke, perhaps in a more contemporary language. And I think the important thing about conservatism is that it understands that, and this is certainly how I would, this is my conservatism, is that it understands that society is a, it looks at society from an organic point of view, understands that it is a partnership, as Burke says, between, you know, those who came before us,

those who are here today and those who come after us. So conservatism, properly described, is naturally conservationist. It's prudent. It analyses change on the basis, you know, in a very pragmatic way. And, you know, it seeks to build on the foundations and principles we have today as it evolves. But it is certainly not anti-change. Now, most people in contemporary politics

who describe themselves as conservatives would not know the difference between Edmund Burke and Tony Burke. They're not actually conservatives at all. I mean, Donald Trump is not remotely a conservative. So many of the people on the right of politics are basically, you know, reactionary populists. They're not conservative at all. I mean, you know, you look at David Cameron's argument for,

you know, and David Cameron really changed the British Conservative Party. He said, you know, he embraced action on climate change, but did so from very strong conservative philosophical foundations because he said, as conservatives, we want to preserve the great things we have today. You know, we want to preserve our inheritance. We want to burnish our inherited institutions.

We want to, you know, obviously improve them naturally, but we don't want to, as, you know, Burke warned all those years ago, throw them all out. And the same follows for the environment. So those people who say we've got to save the planet are not radical left-wingers some of them maybe have left-wing views in other areas but that is a profoundly conservative instinct

equally the defence of institutions the defence of parliament the defence of the rule of law. You see that under assault from so many people on the right, but that is not conservatism. You know, that's right-wing populist radicalism, if you like. Yeah. Yeah. I always thought the deep wisdom in Burkean conservatism, even if only intuitive, was that society is a complex adaptive system. So don't tread on the butterfly, so to speak. Follow the precautionary principle.

And the irony is that today's so-called conservatives aren't able to see that we should take the exact same approach to the mother of all complex systems that is our climate our planet yeah sure yeah but i i kind of want to drill into this a little bit more with you so i've come to believe that the terms conservative and progressive are largely you know that is largely a meaningless verbal distinction. It's too binary. Either you oppose change or you embrace it. When what really matters is the rate of change. And if we do think of society as a complex adaptive system, then changing too quickly eliminates the gains from previous mutations while changing too slowly leads to misfitness.

But the question I had for you, if you agree with that, is how do governments and political leaders know when they're moving too quickly, Malcolm? So how can you tell when you're not adapting fast enough or alternatively when you're moving too quickly? Are there any reliable metrics we could use? Well, you know, in a democracy, government depends on the consent of the government. So you've got to make sure that you can bring people with you. And so that's, you know, that is one measure. So part of the role of government is to explain reform, the need for reform, explain the need for change, reassure doubters.

I mean, you look at the classic case is innovation, which is quite a lot in my book about the innovation and science agenda, which is really one of the most successful policies of my government. And there are plenty of people then and now who say, oh, you should not prioritize innovation. You shouldn't talk about innovation. It scares people. Well, the reality is that unless you, if you are not prepared to innovate, if you are not prepared to make the changes to remain competitive, then you will fall off the back of the pack. Then you will no longer be the high-wage, you know,

first-world economy that you want to be, not least because it underpins our prosperity and way of life, but also because it gives you the resources to maintain a generous social welfare safety net. So, you know, it's a, you know, it is the, there are a lot of politicians who basically see, there are a lot of politicians who are completely lacking in values, right, or purpose other than remaining in power. They're interested in power for its own sake, which has never been of any interest to me whatsoever.

Power without purpose is pointless as far as I'm concerned. And so they will, so politicians, populists particularly, will basically use people's fear of change, people's fear of the new, people's fear or resentment or anxieties about others, minorities, you know, racial, religious minorities or foreigners, and use all of that to keep themselves in power. But then what is their actual agenda? And, you know, part of the problem is that, you know, you can use arguments like that to win elections and you might win quite a few. But if at the end you end up with a society that is not innovative,

that is not free, then what have you got left? A catastrophe, basically. So, you know, freedom, innovation, an open society, these are important at every perspective. They're important from a values point of view, from a human dignity point of view, from a, you know, libertarian point of view, but they're also vitally important from an economic point of view as well. Yeah. I don't have any good answers of my own to that question of how do you know when you're

moving too quickly for society or not quickly enough. But I was reflecting on a couple of possibly illustrative examples from your own career, and one was the issue of the Republic. There's this lovely passage in your 1993 book, The Reluctant Republic, where you say that so long as our constitution provides that whoever sits on the throne of Great Britain is to be our head of state, our progress to independence is incomplete. It is a sentence without a full stop. It is like a fence with all the palings painted but one. It is a sentence without a full stop. It is like a fence with all the palings painted but one. It is an unfinished work. I always loved that passage and I know what

you're trying to do there. You're trying to sort of play on our loss aversion by saying we could have this beautiful completed Australian project but it's not done and the only thing holding us back from finishing it is ourselves. But the other way to interpret that metaphor is that you're expressing the notion that moving to the Republic isn't a radically progressive move. It's the next incremental logical step in Australia's evolution. Because as you write in A Bigger picture, Australia evolved legally and culturally. And, you know, perhaps in 1948, when Menzies said that the boundaries of Britain are not on the Kentish coast, but in the Cargill and Cape York, maybe it was too early for us to move to a

republic then. But by the time you had sunk your teeth into the issue in the late 80s um you know australia was ready and that's why i always thought like i never really understood the quote-unquote conservative framing of the issue as if it ain't broke don't fix it because there just seemed to be no downside it seemed to be more a matter of why not um given the change was reasonably incremental and symbolic. You know, of course, yeah, I mean, it's not rocket surgery, although at the same time, you know, it's not that easy to change the constitution, even if only because the word president is mentioned 40 plus times. So in reference to the president of the Senate, so you can't just substitute in a president

as Australia's head of state. There's all sorts of little logistical issues like that. But, you know, I thought that was an interesting illustration of this idea of how fast should we move. But I still don't have a way to systematise it. So what's the question? There is no question. I'm just thinking out loud.

Look, the bottom line is Australia is an independent country. We are and have been independent of Great Britain for many years. It is an interesting question as to what is the date on which Australia became independent from Great Britain. It certainly wasn't 1901. You know, it's literally, it's actually quite a good essay question. But our independence did evolve. I mean, I've written quite a lot about that in the reluctant republic and fighting for the republic. And indeed, in a bigger picture,

there's one chapter on the republic, but I didn't deal with it at enormous length, only because then there'd be no room in the book for anything else and also because I've already written two books about it but but they both the sale I might say both likely no reluctant Republic's not I don't think well maybe it is anyway fighting for the Republic which is the second book I wrote which is probably the best one if you're going to read one is available on you know as an e-book as indeed is my book about the spycatcher trial available as an e-book. So they're not reprinting them, but they're, well,

they're reprinting them digitally. I don't know whether the Prime Minister's office will be distributing, trying to distribute them for free, but let's hope not. The, yeah, so look, the issue, there's no question. I mean, if Australia became a republic tomorrow under the model that was proposed, it wouldn't be a substantive change to our constitutional arrangements

or our system of government. It would be largely, almost entirely, a symbolic change, but I think it's an important one. But, you know, the problem we faced was that changing the Australian constitution is very hard, you know, and compulsory voting I think is a very big factor in that because if you say to somebody who does not understand an issue and that's not because they're

dim, maybe they're just not terribly interested in it, and you say to them, right, here is this change, you must vote for to do it or not do it, a rational actor will say, gosh, I don't know what the implications of all this is. There are people telling me it's terrible. There are people telling me it's great. Safest thing to do is to do nothing, right? So, and with compulsory voting, of course, we drag people to the polling booth and make them vote. And it is, you know, with something, it's very easy to bamboozle people, which is what, you know, the opponents of change always do.

I mean, look what they've done on climate change. You know, look what people were, you know, the tobacco lobby did for years on smoking. You know, the opponents of reform and change always use obfuscation as a tool. And it's, you know, pretty easy to do that with a constitutional matter. And, of course, we had added to that inherent conservatism the problem of the direct electionists, whose role I think was shameful.

I mean, they basically allowed the perfect to be the enemy of the good and we ended up not getting the reform. But there it is. You know, it's a very, it's George Winterton, who's no longer with us, the great constitutional lawyer. George wrote a book about, as I recall, about our constitution called The Frozen Continent. It might have been an article anyway.

It's a great title title basically saying that our constitutional reform mechanism uh makes it almost impossible to change the constitution so the irony is of course that the constitution has changed a lot um but not its text so if you go back to 1901, the term the Queen in the Constitution is defined as being the, you know, Queen Victoria and her heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom. But what it really, what it meant was the British government. In 1901, the Queen meant Her Majesty's government in the UK, the Imperial government, as they used to call it. And then over the years, with reforms, with the Statute of Westminster and so forth, the Queen came to mean the Queen of Australia

or the Queen in her capacity as Queen of Australia as distinct from her capacity as Queen of the United Kingdom. So you see you have in the Constitution some very interesting provisions. You know, there's a provision there that allows the Queen to disallow, to annul an Australian law which has been passed by the House and the Senate and signed off by the Governor-General within 12 months of its enactment. It's staggering.

So theoretically, a new government could come in, could be elected and say to Her Majesty, I advise the Prime Minister, the new Prime Minister could say, I advise you to annul all of the legislation of the Australian Parliament for the previous 12 months. And I don't see how she could fail to comply with that advice. Now, why is that there? Well, that is there because it enabled the imperial government to disallow legislation that was contrary to imperial interests

that the colonial parliament may have passed and the colonial governor may have foolishly signed off on. Now, there's also a power of what's called reservation and disallowance, which enables the governor general to reserve for Her Majesty's pleasure. And again, that covers a case where the colonial governor, who is appointed by the British government as the first, you know, the Governor's General right up before Isaac, Isaac's raw British government appointees, the British colonial governor could say, oh,

I don't like the look of that law. I'm not going to sign off on it. I'll send this back to head office, right? So, you know, so it's a very, it is a colonial constitution, but, you know, but there's a lot of, we shouldn't kid ourselves that the constitution in 1901 was the constitution of an independent country. It wasn't.

Australia was absolutely not independent in 1901. And most importantly, it didn't seem to be. And you see, this is again why, you know, you quoted that passage of Menzies about the boundaries of Britain. It's a very instructive one because, you know, in that era, Australians, most Australians saw themselves as British. They didn't see any contradiction in being British and Australian. And so, you know, Menzies, I think in 53 or 54, in a debate in the House of Representatives,

said the crown is the symbol that wherever we are in the world, we are one people. Now, he didn't mean one Australian people, I just meant one British people. So for Menzies, the idea that the, and he actually rejected the idea that there shouldn't be a reference to the United Kingdom in the Queen's title. He rejected that because he said, you know,

this is a British institution and we are a British people. So I always used to argue that Menzies would have been a Republican. I know that's probably drawing a long bow. But the reason is that for Menzies, the essence of the crown and the Queen's role was its Britishness. And so Whitlam, I think, actually, in a way, was mistaken in changing the title to Queen of Australia and trying to suggest that the queen was now an Australian institution or the Crown was an Australian institution because it is not.

It is a foreign institution. Read the Constitution. It says the Queen means Queen, you know, Her Majesty Queen Victoria and her heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom. So what that means, Joe, is that if Britain were to become a republic, the President would be our head of state, right?

That is absolutely the case. And interestingly, a very interesting question arises, what would happen if the United Kingdom were to be dissolved? What happens if Northern Ireland joins up with the Republic of Ireland and or, and in particular, if Scotland secedes? Then the United Kingdom doesn't exist. And you basically have the Queen is no longer, there is no one in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom because the United Kingdom has ceased to exist.

So, you know, the monarchy in Australia is entirely derivative of the United Kingdom, well, the institutions of British government. The tension between the direct electionists and those who thought Australian head of state should be chosen by a majority of parliament, whether simple or two-thirds, was the central issue that torpedoed the Republic in 1999. And I was chatting with Anne Toomey recently, the professor of constitutional law at the University of Sydney, about ways to resolve that tension next time around. And Anne has a really interesting idea, which I think was inspired by the Malaysian constitution. In Malaysia, the king is elected every five years by the Conference of Rulers, which is itself comprised of the hereditary rulers of nine of the 13 states of Malaysia. And so in light of that, Anne's idea, which she wrote up in a short article in the Australian Law Journal in 2015,

titled An Alternative Republic Proposal, which I'll put up on my website. But Anne's idea was to have the Australian people choose the head of state from the state governors. And to ensure the dignity of the process, you wouldn't have direct campaigning by the governors. You know, voters would get a little booklet with information about each eligible governor, you know, could check the website and see their speeches. There'd be no policies or campaigning, so they wouldn't have a mandate that rivals the prime minister. And they'd be people who were qualified rivals the prime minister and they'd be

people who were qualified for the job because they had necessary experience due to the fact that they were state governors what what she'll hate me calling this but what do you think of the toomey model well look it's it's it's interesting but i to be honest with you, I don't think it would fly. I think that if you're going to have direct election, it's basically got to be open slather. That's my, you know, judgment, my political judgment. I think that, you know, you might say, you know, you've got to have, you know,

some sort of qualification so people can get on the ballot paper so that you don't have, you know, 1,000 names on the ballot paper. You know, I don't know whether that's a high deposit or whether you've got to get, you know, 10,000 signatures or something like that. You know, you need to have something to make it workable. But I reckon that basically saying you can have a free vote, but we're only, you know, we're not going to,

we will tell you who you can vote for. I think that, I think honestly the populist argument against that, Joe, would be so easy to make. Okay. My judgment is that what we need to do, as I say in my book, and I've held this view for over 20 years, is that the next time round, which I think should be after the Queen dies or advocates, we should have a preliminary plebiscite which asks people to choose between direct election and, you know,

the two-thirds majority, you know, the bipartisan model, however that's framed. And we've got to have that debate and encourage that to be a good, you know, robust debate. Thrash that out uphill and down, Dale. And then when the public have decided which one they want, you then say, all right, you know, dust off Malcolm and George's constitutional amendments

from 1993 and no doubt various luminaries can improve them and make sure that the constitutional amendments fit that model, whichever model you've chosen, and then you put that to people in a referendum. See, the thing you can't afford to do is, again, be fighting on two fronts. So we've got to have the mode of election front fight first and then having decided that, then have the referendum on it

because you can only put one model up in the referendum. You've got to put up specific amendments. So I don't agree with the idea that some people have made that we should have a preliminary question, do you want to be a republic? I mean, Keating advocated that back in the 90s. And look, I wasn't opposed to that at the time, but I think we've just moved too far from that. I mean, that's nearly 30 years ago.

Yeah. And essentially, if you go out there and say, do you want to be a republic? The obvious answer is, well, what sort of republic? I'm not going to give you a blank check. So, you know, that would be so easy to beat. If you say, right, the Queen's reign has come to an end. You know, God bless her. You know, God bless her. You know, welcome King Charles.

But it's time to reconsider this. But there are basically two options on offer. Here they are. No-one's seriously suggesting we should have an American-style executive presidency, I don't believe. I've never heard anyone seriously suggest that, and I suspect Donald Trump's made that even less likely to be supported.

So, and you put that up, have that, thrash that out, and then having made a decision, you then say, right, this is the one we're going to put up. And I think that's your best chance. Yeah. The other illustrative example of judging whether we're moving too quickly or too slowly for society that arises out of your career, I think, is the introduction of same-sex marriage. And I remember you gave a speech in 2012, I think it was the Michael Kirby lecture, where the approach you took was to look at all the arguments against marriage equality, and you subsequently found them severely lacking. But for me, that was an indication that,

you know, the complex system that is Australian society was ready for the change. Again, I'm just sort of thinking out loud. Well, yeah, well, the reason I did that, Joe, that was quite deliberate because the arguments in favour of marriage equality are so obvious and compelling. It's basically an argument about human rights, beautiful rights. And if we say we're not going to discriminate against people on the basis of their sexual orientation,

how can we and and you know if we respect same-sex couples uh how can we say they can't call that relationship a marriage so but what i wanted to do was to sort of turn the the arguments over and say okay let's have a look at what the arguments against are and And they basically run, they sort of dissolve. They run through your hands like sand or water because they're so, and they basically all boil down to animosity towards people who are gay. Look, I think with same-sex marriage, the problem was that there were people, particularly within the Liberal and National parties, and some in Labor, who were just ferociously opposed to it. And they were determined to do everything they could to stop it and so it was quite and and you know as you know well there's a whole chapter in my book about it it's quite a

labyrinthine byzantine you know process of how we got there but from my point of view if i just wanted to get it done and it you know that required a lot of deft footwork and there were plenty of dead ends and problems. Of course, Labor was absolutely determined to ensure that this important social reform was not something that would happen on our watch, on my watch in particular. So the Liberal Party, assuming it doesn't, you know, become, you know, the sort of far-right party or ultra-reactionary party, which I hope it doesn't, I hope it maintains a strong, smaller Liberal component,

but the Liberal Party will, in decades to come, be able to say, we delivered that reform, just like it was a Liberal Party that delivered the constitutional reforms that, you know, recognised Aboriginal people in the Constitution, just like it was a Liberal government that formally abolished the White Australia policy. You know, these are good, important points.

And, of course, Labor can, you know, point to others too. You know, Kevin's apology to the Stolen Generations, you know, being another watershed, you know, social reform. Yeah. Malcolm, speaking of not wanting the Liberal Party to become a reactionary far-right party, I'm not sure if you've read Nassim Taleb's latest popular book, Skin in the Game. It came out, I think.

I haven't read that one, actually. Right. Thank you. I will get it and I'll read it. Yeah. So, in Skin in the Game, he discusses an idea that he coins the minority rule, which is the notion that a small but intransigent minority, you know, say 3 or 4% lot of depth fleshing out the idea with mathematical physics, talks about renormalization groups, but there are, you know, several examples, some of which are familiar, others quite surprising, which probably help people get a better grasp than

talking about physics. So examples include the fact that most or many soft drinks are kosher, airplanes and schools are often peanut free. A high proportion of the meat in the United Kingdom, where the practicing Muslim population is only three to four percent, is halal. Another example is the spread of automatic over manual cars. Extreme right or left-wing parties outperforming are disproportionate to their actual base. The emergence of lingua francas, the historic spread of Islam in the Near East, and the method of falsificationism in science. So, the basic idea is that there's an asymmetry where the small minority is inflexible, whereas

the large majority is flexible. So, the common denominator is to submit to the minority's will. In a press conference on the 23rd of August 2018, during the coup that finally toppled you, I remember you said something that piqued my interest. You said that what began as a minority has, by a process of intimidation, persuaded people that the only way to stop the insurgency is to give into it. And listening to you, I couldn't help but think about the coup in terms of Nassim Taleb's minority rule. So my question to you, Malcolm, is how does the Liberal Party deal with its small but intransigent right-wing minority?

Well, firstly, I think all of those points you've made are very well made. The problem is, exactly as you describe it, you get a minority, and there's certainly much, they're not a small minority, I mean, and in some parts of the country, they may not even be a minority and there's certainly much they're not a small minority i mean and in some parts of the country they may not even be a minority at all but you get a minority say in the federal party room which says um we you know we're this right-wing group we demand x and if you don't deliver it we will blow the show up. Now, that is essentially

the tactic of terrorism. Now, obviously, it doesn't involve guns and bombs, but it's exactly, you know, that's how terrorists operate. Terrorists say to the majority, to the state, give in to us or we will keep on blowing things up. And, you know, as I describe in my book, and, you know, there's plenty of documentation and authentication of these points, that's exactly what they did. And basically they are terrorising the Liberal Party. Now, this has a couple of consequences.

Firstly, more moderate people get intimidated and give in. That's for sure. But secondly, remembering the Liberal Party is a voluntary organisation, people don't join or they don't renew or they leave. I mean, it's an interesting case study. Take the seat of Indi. Now, Sophie Mirabella, a right-wing, very formidable politician, very abrasive, managed to offend enough of her constituents

to actually lose that very safe seat in 2013. And the Liberal Party membership in Indi had dwindled and people that were more moderately inclined had left. So basically Sophie had got a group of people in her branches that supported her and they then re-endorsed her in 2016, right, whereupon Cathy McGowan won again. So, you know, the point being that you can get this sort of self-defeating phenomenon where you have a party, it could be a branch or the national party, that doesn't represent the values or attitudes to people whose votes you need to succeed, you discourage a broader cross-section of people to join and basically, you know, that it calls them to leave.

And so you end up with this increasingly unrepresentative party organisation that then has policies and candidates that can't succeed. I mean, this is not just an issue on the right, of course. I mean, you look at the British Labor Party persisting with Jeremy Corbyn. I mean, you know, it was perfectly obvious that he was unelectable, that he was, it was perfectly obvious. So they basically, you know, in an act of what you can only call

gigantic self-harm, delivered the election result to Boris Johnson by making him, you know, and I mean, people say Shorten was unelectable and he was unpopular. Well, he was certainly unpopular, but I don't think he was entirely unelectable. You know, he had big issues. But Corbyn, you know, was right out there. You know, we don't want to get into a long discussion

about British politics, but you can, you know, you don't have to be a political scientist or, you know, journalist to work out that Corbynism was a catastrophe for British labour. But they knew it. And it was because they'd gone off and they had recruited this mass membership. It was, you know, very left wing and, you know, said,

great, we've got control of the party. We'll have this wonderful left wing leader. Terrific. And then the public say, no way. And then they get to squabble over the spoils of opposition, which are few and far between. The logical solution to the challenge of the minority rule is for the majority to become just as uncompromising

as the minority until that implies as much in the book. But that leads me to wonder whether the Liberal Party is less a broad church and more of a fractured Frankenstein, sort of torn between an economically rational and socially liberal centre or left wing and a socially conservative and increasingly kind of big government leaning in terms of the economy and protectionist right wing um and i was you know i was just running a thought experiment the other day you know we had to start the liberal party from scratch today um i'd be very surprised to see you and tony abbott placed in the same party. So I wonder whether, you know, we're left with these two philosophically inconsistent factions

just as a result of historical contingency and the Liberal Party itself is therefore sort of unsustainable. Well, okay. Well, Joe, you're right. You know, you raise a very important point. So here's the answer. The way a broad church is meant to operate in a political party is that you get, you know, 100 people in the party room together. You have people on the left, people on the right, people in the middle. You have people on the left, people on the right, people in the middle. You have a debate.

You thrash something out and the majority or a consensus want to go this direction and everyone says, yep, okay, that's the rules of the road. Off we go. If, on the other hand, and you saw this with the neg, you have got a minority that say, we don't care what you think. We will bring the government down if you don't give in to us. Then the whole premise of a political party is destroyed. Because if you have, unless people are prepared to compromise and accept what, you know, the majority's view and go along with the consensus, and unless they're prepared to do that, then what is the point

of them all being in the same room? They should be separate parties. You know, because you see the difficulty. And so that's the problem. That's why George Brandis' letter to me, which is in the last chapter of the book, makes that point. I mean, George says this is not the... I'll just see if I can find it.

Let's see. I'm just trying to find this now. Okay, here. He says, the thuggish events of last week showed the new leaders of the right are not prepared to accommodate more moderate voices at all. They've repudiated the approach of John Howard. Indeed, they've repudiated Robert Menzies for a liberal party from which liberalism is expunged is not the party Menzies founded. And that's absolutely right. So prior to your entering politics, you had a very successful career in the law and then in merchant banking and venture capital. I'd be fascinated to know how you managed the pivot from lawyer to venture capitalist, whether there were any great books that helped you learn the trade.

For example, I've worked in startups without prior experience, but some books that really helped me were Peter Thiel's zero to one Ben Horowitz is the hard thing about hard things and the founders dilemma were there any books that helped you I don't know I mean I I basically yeah well as I describe it all in my book, a big picture, but the, no, I mean, after I'd done the spy catcher trial, I felt that I'd, you know, I felt I'd done as much as I could do in the law. I thought everything I did after this week would be an anti-climax, right?

And so, and I wanted to do something different. I wanted to, you know, become financially independent. And I thought the best way to do that was to get into the deal business as an investor. So, I set up an investment bank, you know, and I was ran in Whitlam and it went very well. You know, Nick left after a couple of years, but went very well for a decade. Do you have a criteria for venture capital investments or a set of heuristics that you use? Say a company comes to you, just you,

and you have to decide whether to invest, what sort of questions would you ask? Oh, well, there's a host of questions. You've got to work out whether this is... I mean, I invest mostly in technology. So you've got to work out, are they in the right part of the stream? Are they, have they got a, is there a trend that will support them? Are they the best in their field? What about the management? Management is everything.

You can have a brilliant technology, a brilliant business plan, but if it's not well executed, it'll fail. So, you've got a host of, I mean, you're really asking me to describe a due diligence list, but it is, and, you know, most start-ups don't succeed in the sense that they don't grow on to become profitable companies. But, you know, I'm a great believer in innovation, and I think from a public policy point of view as opposed to an investor point of view, any start-up is a value. I mean if you invest, if you put a million dollars into a startup that fails, you've lost a million

dollars. That's very sad. But you look at how the public interest is concerned, the people who founded it will have learned a lot. They'll all have, you know, earned money and paid tax and, you know, GST and everything else. So they're all adding to the economy and to the government revenues. But they all learn a lot. And so, you know, there's a lot. That's why it's always worthwhile for governments to encourage innovation.

And because, you know, even if you don't, it doesn't, from a government's point of view, it doesn't actually matter whether the start-ups succeed. Obviously, you want some of them to succeed and if all the ones you're supporting or funding from government programs are duds, then you've probably got to get somebody else to run the program. But it is, there is a real public interest in it. You've got to create an ecosystem.

And I describe how we did that in the book. And, you know, I've got to tell you, the transformation between the Australian venture capital scene today from what it was five years ago is staggering. Yeah. And, you know, the numbers are there. It is, and, you know, a large part of that was because of the leadership, the incentives, the, you know, the promotion that we gave for innovation through the National Innovation and Science Agenda.

Quick but consequential question about China. In 2011, you gave a speech at the London School of Economics where you said that China, unlike the Soviet Union, doesn't seek to export its ideology or system of government to other countries. You accepted Kissinger's then contrast between missionary US exceptionalism based on an obligation to spread its values to every part of the world with China's disinterest in claiming its institutions are relevant outside of China.

But by the time you'd become prime minister, I feel like, you know, much to your credit, this was an example of your intellectual agility, you'd become rather more hawkish on China. And, you know, maybe that was because the facts changed. And so, you changed your mind. For example, Xi became more aggressive in his foreign policy. We had the Belt and Road Initiative emerge in 2013, as well as the artificial islands in the South China Sea and the industrial scale of China's intelligence gathering. But my question to you, Malcolm, is there were many people who were hawkish on China at the time you gave that speech in 2011.

So were the China hawks savvy and peering over the horizon or were they lucky in that they just turned out to be right? Look, I think you're dramatically oversimplifying a more complex issue. I mean, there are, you know, a China hawk. What does that mean? I mean, there are people that have been opposed to the People's Republic of China from the very inception because it's a communist regime. You know, I think the I think the reality, I think that the China's posture, as I described in the 2011 speech, was one point in time. But by the time I became prime minister, there had been a lot of change.

You know, I mean, Xi Jinping's, China's foreign policy changed considerably. China has become not less authoritarian, it's become more authoritarian. I mean, we got, you know, a lot of the things we were expecting, maybe not the ultra hawks were expecting, but a lot of people were expecting that as China became economically more successful,

it would become more liberal. And in fact, you know, technology and the internet, far from, if you like, liberating China, has given the state greater levers of control. But the point I, so, you know, my point simply is that we have to stand up for our position and our values and that's certainly what I did when I was Prime Minister, you know, ahead of many other nations in fact. But, yeah, so that's, I mean, the reality though is, Kissinger's point, which I endorsed, is still right,

that China does not seek to export an ideology. What it seeks from others is compliance. It doesn't really care what our system of government is as long as we, you know, are compliant with China's interests and agendas, you know, and that is, you know, they don't, they have a view of their own exceptionalism, and China is an exceptional country, obviously.

That is, you know, they don't, you know, they don't have an ideology they're trying to export, and Kissinger is right about that. And so that's a very important difference, but it also, but it nonetheless means that, you know, we've got to maintain our sovereignty. And that's why, you know, I always used to say, and I've said it for many years, that just as Mao founded

modern China with the statement the Chinese people stood up saying the Chinese people are asserting their sovereignty so the Australian people and every other people are entitled to say we stand up and assert our sovereignty and we expect that to be as respected as you want us to respect yourself. When you lost the Liberal leadership in December 2009, you described falling into a deep depression in early 2010. And, you know, for the first time in your life, suicidal thoughts started to enter your mind, unbidden and unwanted, in your words. Then you were prescribed antidepressants. And you wrote on the 20th of April in your personal diary that you were thinking about dying all the time. How would you describe the feeling of depression to someone who's never

properly experienced it? Oh, well, I mean, I think it probably varies with a sense of hopelessness, helplessness, sometimes despair. You know, it's falling out of love with yourself, almost self-loathing. It can sometimes be part of it. It's a complex set of feelings and different for everybody, but I think I've described in my book, and I mean, you know, the advantage in terms of the description is I've got contemporary

accounts of how I was feeling, you know, in a diary that, you know, I had filed away in a file with a password that I'd completely forgotten. And then just when I came to, you know, writing this book and I found the file and the password, which is quite a complex one, just popped into my mind, which is amazing. Yeah. What do you think, where do you think that instinct comes from to end one's life?

I don't know. Joe, I don't know. I mean, I think it's a, I think, you know, a lot of people face depression. And in terms of, you know, suicidal thoughts, I mean, one of the wisest things that was ever said to me about suicide is that, you know, and I say it quite often in the book, I say it in the book, it's a permanent solution

to a temporary problem, you know. So, you know, people, you know, people, you should never give up. And, you know, again, I make the point that, you know, people, you should never give up. And, you know, again, I make the point that, you know, the consequences of people taking their own lives is very, is obviously fatal for the person who does it, but also the impact on others is immense. But, you know, there's so much, you know, people should seek help, you know, they should talk to others, talk to friends, you know, call Lifeline. I mean, Daisy, our daughter, you know,

works at Lifeline. There are plenty of places, there are many places where people can get help. But the most important thing, I think, with depression is to recognise that you are vulnerable to it, and truthfully, I think most people are to some extent. Recognise you're vulnerable to it and recognise the signs when it's starting to creep up on you, when the black dog is starting to nibble at your heels, you've got to recognise that it's there and, you know, take steps to counteract it.

And, you know, that might be as simple as going for a walk, getting some sunshine, you know, and also reflecting on, you know, on the good things. You know, counting your blessings is an important thing. Do you believe in an afterlife? I do, but not... Yeah, I do, but yes, I do. Interesting.

Okay. I would have guessed the opposite. I'm not... When I say I'm not, I think... It's probabilistic. Yeah, probably, yeah. So sometime in December 2012, we spoke about Nassim Taleb before, at risk of mentioning him one too many times.

Sometime in December 2012, you read Taleb's book Anti-Fragile, and I know this because the book was published on the 27th of November and you quoted it approvingly as early as the 27th of December in a speech at the Woodford Folk Festival. Taleb begins the book very evocatively with the image of fire. He writes that wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire. And he goes on, likewise, with randomness, uncertainty, chaos. You want to use them, not hide from them. You want to be the fire and wish for the wind.

So the crux of the book is about how we should act and structure our lives and our societies in a world of uncertainty and opacity. I used to say a lot, you've got to make volatility a trend. Brilliant. Yeah, that's an even better summary. So my question is both at the individual and the collective level, how do we cultivate anti-fragility? Well, I think it is all about agility.

It's about recognizing that you – I mean, I've talked about this a lot. And one of the metaphors I used to use was that of the surfer. So, you know, the surfer knows that they're, you know, well, they're faced with the waves, the reality of the waves. They're, you know, they're not predictable. They'll break in different ways. And so the surfer says, how am I going to harness this environment to achieve what I want to do? And what we've got to do is recognise that volatility is the environment to achieve what I want to do. And what we've got to do is recognise that volatility

is the environment, describes the environment in which we're in. You know, we live in a time where the pace and scale of change is quite unprecedented. And so all of that means is therefore that we've got to use it to our advantage, you know, take advantage of it. Because there's no point, you can't say stop the world, I want to get off or I'm going to hide under the doona. You know, that will be self-defeating, you know,

you might get away with it for a short time. So you've got to basically say, okay, this is the world we're in. How are we going to take advantage of this? How are we going going to make volatility our friend that's why I used to sort of say instead of saying as a lot of politicians do oh there's all these new things coming it's all terrible you know put up the fences put up the walls come on we're all tied under the national doona my pitch was there's never been a more exciting time to be an Australian. And that sort of optimistic note is also a practical and realistic one because you can't change.

The one thing we can't change is the disruption. You know, you've got to, you can't, this disruption, this pace and scale of change, that's a very important insight, if I may say so. But it is, it is the, we've never seen in all of human history, so much change so quickly. You know, it is, I mean, you think about, I used to give examples in my speeches. You know, you think about something as now mundane but profoundly impactful and important as the smartphone. First iPhone 2007, right? That's 13 years ago. So if the iPhone was a human being, that child would be just starting high school, right?

Still a kid. And, you know, Facebook, 2005, so still wouldn't have left high school, et cetera, you know, and so it goes on. So that means that you've got to be prepared to do things differently. Very last question, Malcolm. You're 65 years young. You're the same age Churchill was when he became Prime Minister in 1940 and began to lead the war effort against Nazi Germany.

Yes. How do you view your role going forward at this stage in your life? Well, I'm out of parliament and out of politics, or I'm certainly out of parliamentary politics. And I've got my book written, which has been quite a big project. I'm back investing in technology, which I enjoy. I'll no doubt continue to speak up on important issues of public policy. But as to the rest, who knows?

As I say in the book, no doubt I'm looking forward to many more adventures with Lucy, most of which, you know, probably, you know, will be unexpected. But as they always are, it's the best, you know. So we'll see. You know, there's lots of things to do and, you know, as long as, you know, I'm spared, you know, and I have good health and I'll, you know, get on with it.

And, you know, the other great joy, of course, is spending more time with my children, Alex and Daisy, and of course, their kids. I've got four little grandchildren, which are a great joy. Well, Malcolm, I and many other Australians are looking forward to seeing where your next adventures take you and Lucy. You're always welcome back on the show. Thank you so much for your time.

Good to see you. Thanks, Joe. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. For links and notes for everything we discussed, you can find those on my website, www.josephnoelwalker.com. That's my full name, J-O-S-E-P-H-N-O-E-L-W-A-L-K-E-R.com. I'm also on Twitter. My handle is at Joseph N Walker. Finally, I know everybody asks, but it does help. If you enjoyed this episode and you haven't subscribed, please do hit the subscribe button. And moreover, if you really enjoyed it, please leave a rating and a

review. It does help people find me and it helps me get the harder to get guests. So, thank you again for your time. Until next time, ciao and take care.