The Rest Is History - 189. Australian Prime Ministers: Bob Hawke - Scott Morrison

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

Join Tom and Dominic for the final episode of their Australian epic. Tune in to hear about the exploits of the most recent stretch of prime ministers, spanning from Bob Hawke to Scott Morrison. Join��The Rest Is History Club for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. I like him personally, but I think he's as mad as a cut snake. What's the bugger going to say next? That's a random Australian talking about my co-presenter, Tom Holland, quoting Bob Hawke, Prime Minister of Australia, talking about another Prime Minister of Australia many years later, Tony Abbott. So Australians, Tom, if you've ever

watched debates from the Australian legislature, they have a splendid way with words. I haven't really, but I have watched, obviously, Ash's series. So I've seen how Australians behave to visiting English cricketers.

Political sledging. They'reicketers. Political sledging. They're absolutely brilliant at political sledging. Yeah, sledging is the great Australian art. Yeah. Mental disintegration. So for our overseas listeners who don't know what sledging is, sledging is basically just abuse. Abuse.

Yeah. So you were quoting Bob Hawke. Yeah, and that's where we got to yeah so we've been going through uh australia's wartime and post-war prime ministers um we were planning to do it in one episode then we were planning to do it in two episodes um but there are so many australian prime ministers that we'd have to do in three and we've come now to probably the prime the australian prime minister who to the average pom yeah would be the kind of the platonic ideal of an australian he's the paradigm of an australian prime minister he's kind of

square george craggy loves a pint and in fact i mean his great feat uh he was a road scholar at oxford um he uh he set the world record for downing a yard of ale in 11 seconds. He did it in 11 seconds. So just for people who don't know, which I assume is 99% of people, a yard of ale, it's a very thin, long glass. And I think they have it at the Turf Tavern in Oxford. Tom, have you ever been to the Turf, a kind of classic Oxford pub? They have it behind the bar.

And I think that's the yard of ale that Bob Hawke downed. I mean, it's a colossal amount. Yeah, because there's photos of him up there, I think, doing it. Exactly. And he downed it in 11 seconds. And as a feat, I mean, that is unsurpassed. I mean, that was a world record. I think it still is, isn't it?

I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it's been beaten. But anyway, Bob Hawke. So in our previous podcast about Australia, certainly in the first one, which was less about trousers and more about genuine kind of themes of Australian political history, we talked about the religious stuff, which I know obviously sort of you enjoy. And how many of them, how many Australian, senior Australian politicians came from religious

backgrounds or backgrounds in which they had maybe abjured their religion and there was still a kind of sense of mission and stuff. And that's very true. I mean, Bob Hawke appears to be this kind of hard drinking, you know, barbecue loving Mr. Australia. But his father was a congregationalist pastor and as a as a boy he was brought up in this atmosphere of um of of sort of almost sort of suffocating religious intensity so his his um his his father told him according to his biographer

that um he should believe in the fatherhood of god and the heaven was all around him and all this kind of thing and he absolutely grows up in that atmosphere right so it won't surprise you to hear that obviously i think that there's an incredibly christian strain within the left's approach to policy you know hawk is essentially i mean that's that's what his politics is, is a secularized version of those kinds of Christian principles. I think that's absolutely true. So apparently when he was a boy growing up in,

what's he growing up? He's growing up in a place called Border Town. And he's, he has gets a scholarship to school in Perth and so on. But when he's a boy, I mean, these are not sort of glamorous places by Australian standards. But even when he's a boy, I mean, these are not glamorous places by Australian standards. But even when he's a boy, because he's so clever,

his family joke, and they'll say he'll be prime minister one day. And he goes off to the University of Western Australia to study law. And he's riding home on his motorbike when he feels something wrong. And he has this crash, this terrible crash. And he almost is killed. He spends days between life and death. And his mother says to him, you've been spared and it's a sign of God's providence.

And Hawke absolutely believes it. He says later, I firmly believe that God had spared my life. He thinks he's been given this new chance and he's determined not to waste it. And that basically drives him into sort of good works and so on. So he joins- It doesn't stop him drinking, does it? It doesn't stop him. So he literally has alcohol poisoning in 1963.

Yeah, he does. But he's also, by that point, he's given up his faith. Because do you know why? He went to India with the World Conference of Christian Youth. And he was really shocked that the World Conference of Christian Youth were having a great time. You know, they're staying in nice places and presumably knowing him getting lashed every night. He's struck by the contrast with the poverty of the people around them.

And he thinks he can't reconcile this. And he basically loses his faith. But as you say, Tom, he retains that sense of mission. His sense of mission sense of mission yeah um the and but he sort of that that that brings him into trade unionism and trade yeah and so we we talked we mentioned him briefly in the uh discussion of whitlam gov whitlam affair yesterday uh he was very prominent trade union leader um and that provides him with the springboard then to to enter politics um but he's also interesting he's's very pro-American. Yeah, I saw this.

He's actually kind of informant to the US. So, yeah, kind of, you know, an interesting combination. But there is that tradition in Australian politics, as indeed in British politics, of sort of very self-consciously patriotic in Australia, obviously even more so anti-communist, kind of pro-Western alliance kind of left-wing politics James Callaghan yeah I mean James Callaghan Dennis Healy that kind of I mean

I think Hawke absolutely kind of um conforms to that pattern it's remarkable that he enters parliament only three years before he becomes prime minister yeah and fans of Le Carré will be very excited to learn the name of the labor leader who he replaces which is bill hayden oh i went i went no we shouldn't give it away but uh tinker taylor soldier spy yeah it's great that he does yes um and hawk is an incredibly successful prime minister yeah but interestingly so as you say he's got this kind of, you know, this image of being the plain speaking, craggy. I mean, he is. He really is a man's man, isn't he? With all this, these drinking feats, even though he's given up booze.

Yeah, he gives it up. He pledges to give it up when he enters parliament and he sticks to that. Yeah. Until he leaves office. But his politics are a really interesting mix because he basically revives and intensifies the universal health care that Gough Whitlam had tried to pioneer in the 70s. But also in his economic stuff, that looks all very reforming and stuff. But it's actually not that dissimilar from what the battery government is doing yeah are doing is doing in britain so floating the australian dollar deregulating the economy bringing down tariffs yeah bringing down barriers all that sort of stuff basically opening the australian economy up to globalization into the economic trends of the late 20th century you know he's doing it from a left-wing sort of um perspective but it's not really that dissimilar

from what thatcher and jeffrey how we're doing in britain from a right-wing standpoint in the early 1980s um and it's and it's funny that the people so rarely draw parallels between the two because you're so imprisoned by kind of partisanship well i think also because uh the example of hawk and then keating who succeeds him are so influential on new labor in britain yeah i think that's right but you yeah i mean it's it's it's it's a fascinating parallel really is but you mentioned keating yeah i mean that's a great partnership isn't it i mean that's one of that that's the arguably the great partnership well it's the partnership that goes wrong so again a bit a bit like, I mean, I'm sorry for Australian listeners endlessly reducing it to parallels with New Labour,

but there's a kind of Blair Brown dynamic going on there. So the interesting thing about Hawke is that he, as you say, was a Rhodes Scholar. He didn't really like Oxford and didn't like the British, I think. No, and so he legislates to remove the last kind of links to… Well, he gets rid of the anthem, doesn't he? He says at one point, it's absolutely ridiculous that basically remove uh you know the last kind of links to when he gets rid of the anthem doesn't he yeah the um he says at one point it's absolutely ridiculous that basically when the british win some win an

olympic gold they get up and it's god save the queen if we beat them it's also god save the queen um which i think is probably fair enough but but um i think partly because he's a road scotland he's so clever and he's so successful and all of this stuff, he can play the part very happily of the ordinary guy because he's got nothing to lose. So he doesn't have any psychological hangups about people thinking he's stupid or anything. So he can sort of say, well, all I'm interested in is gambling, watching loads of sports, smoking cigars, obviously would have been alcohol in the old days so he can do all that but his treasurer and his political partner paul keating can't do all that because he yeah because he um he's catholic irish descent working class and he leaves school at 14 so his father yeah his father was a boiler maker and he i mean to leave school at 14 and to be involved in

australian politics in the 1980s and 1990s i mean that must he yeah heating clearly has a very very strong sense of i've i've fought and scrapped my way up i haven't had any advantages but also you you was you were saying so hawk who has been to oxford and is transparently you know he has all kinds of academic credentials can play the larrikin. Yeah. You know. So after he leaves office, one of his favourite stunts is to go to cricket grounds and drown in tarpines in, again, 11 seconds or something.

Yeah. The entertainment of fans. There's great video footage of him doing that. Whereas Keating, although he is this, you know, he has kind of the image of a kind of a tough street fighter. He loves Marla. He collects French antique clocks. So really the pair of them are such fascinating and impressive men.

Yeah. I mean, their record is really extraordinary. And it's under them really that australia comes to seem i think to to countries in europe and america who previously might not have paid much attention to australia that they're very very interested in what they're doing that they're socially progressive and they're kind of um economically liberal which essentially establishes the template for the kind of government you know the third way yeah for clinton exactly yeah schroder um well and they schroder's not a name we bandy around on this podcast but he would

but i mean he that's pretty much what he did it is it is i mean you know he in at the time he was seen as very successful leader so um australia blazes the path there um but this kind of homicidal Game of Thrones aspect to Australian party politics that we mentioned in the previous episode, Hawke ends up being assassinated by Keating, his long-term mate. Well, they'd had an agreement, hadn't they, called the Kirribilli.

I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. That's the Prime Minister's house in Sydney. They'd had this agreement in 1988. Very, very... So I know you've already apologised for the constant parallels, but it's very Granita to British listeners, the Blair-Brown Pact. And this pact basically was that Hawke would hand over

to Keating, and he didn't. He basically said to him – Occupation of the crease. Yeah, yes. I'm not throwing away my wicket. And Keating, you know, tries these kind of – does this leadership challenge in the summer, I think, in 91, when the economy is actually already beginning to start to turn.

So the economic miracle of the 80s is beginning to fade. Keating challenges Hawking. He doesn't win at first, does he? But then he does win a second time in the second challenge at the end of 91 in December. And becomes prime minister. And becomes prime minister. And Keating was an absolute hate figure, wasn't he, for the British tabloids?

Yes. Well, so, I mean, he's, as we said, kind of of Irish descent. So there's a definite, you know, that, that, that strain of anti-British resentment of, um, Britain as a class ridden, monarchical, uh, antiquated crumbling empire. Yeah. Um,

it's, it's definitely a motivating factor for him. We mentioned in the first episode about the, um, the Anglo Australian bust up over who was responsible for the debacle at Singapore, um, in the Second World War. And Keating had very strident views on that, that it was the fault of the British.

And he's very keen to see the Queen removed as head of state and for Australia to become the Republic. He says Britain is the country which decided not to defend the Malayan Peninsula, not to worry about Singapore, and not to give us our troops back to keep ourselves free from Japanese domination. So there's absolutely no shreds of the old kith and kin from Paul Keating. No, none of that. He's the opposite of Robert Menzies. And so the Queen comes on a state visit in 1992,

and Keating tells her, basically, you know, we want a republic. And the Queen plays it very well. I mean, she says, fine, you know, whatever you want to do. But the thing that gets the British tabloids going is that Keating touches Her Majesty. But he touches her, I mean, let's be honest. Not like John Gorton had touched Liza Minnelli. He touches her in the most fleeting and sort of barely noticeable way. He puts his hand for a moment. And it's concerned, isn't it? I mean, he's concerned that she doesn't fall.

He's helping her. He ushers her down. A chivalrous gesture. Or something like that, with his hand for a second on her back. And everybody then says... And the camera slaps it. Yeah.

And so they call him the Lizard of Oz. The Lizard of Oz. Yeah, and everybody says everybody says oh my god it's absolutely disgraceful typical australian behavior trying to grope our dear queen but i mean it's hard to feel too sorry for keating because um i mean he really gives as good as he gets he is he is fabulous with the insults well so the opposition leader john houston this is a very famous quote in Australia, says basically, why won't you call an early election? And Keating says, I want to do you slowly. The answer is, mate, I want to do you slowly.

You're very good at this, Tom. I shall defer to you on the Australian insult impersonation. So during the 80s, the leader of the opposition was a guy called Andrew Peacock uh and he said the leader of the opposition is more to be pitied than despised the poor old thing the liberal party of australia ought to put him down like a faithful old dog because he is no use to it and of no use to the nation um and then another leader of the opposite actually i think it may still be andrew peacock again he just said i did not slither out of the cabinet room like a mangy maggot um he uh he described john howard who subsequently became a liberal prime minister there's a little desiccated coconut uh and it

was incredibly rude about john howard had dennis heady type um eyebrows and george pompadour yeah style eyebrows i will never get to the stage of wanting to lead the nation standing in front of the mirror every morning clipping the eyebrows here and clipping the eyebrows there with janet and the kids it's like spot the eyebrow oh god so good good i mean good knock about stuff but he called the the liberals a motley dishonest crew he called the national party dummies and dimwits desperados and he said of another um opposition politician peter costolo being attacked by him was like being flogged with warm lettuce yeah and jeffrey howe style compared him to a dead sheep being savaged by a dead sheep

don't know who came first with that actually but actually the thing is that keating tom is a um he's a great character but also he is a substantial politician because he yeah he he not only does he embody a long-running kind of sort of a long-running strain in australian politics which is the sort of um i suppose populist reformist anti-british chippy chippy yeah chippy but chippy can be good as well as bad because so for example it's keating who in 1992 gives this hugely important landmark speech uh called the red fun park speech about aboriginal reconciliation which because we talked in the very first podcast six weeks ago on that we did on australian politics um we talked about racism and the

white australia policy and keating really is the first prime minister i mean obviously there have been labor prime ministers in particular who've sort of faced up to it before but he's the first one who who goes really out of his way yeah and i want i wonder if it's um in a way the fact that he is seen as such a street fighter the fact that he has such a caustic tongue means that that when he does this it has a greater impact so rather like the fact that he's so obviously you know he's a labor politician he also famously says about the recession that it was um uh it was the recession we had to have which was a you know a phrase that the liberal party really tried to hang around his neck in the election of 93, which is the year after he becomes prime minister. But amazingly, he wins it.

So it's a kind of John Major style election victory against the odds. So I think he's a very impressive, charismatic figure. He's sort of stuck with his approach, hasn't he? Because even now in the last few months, he's still quite vocal. He says Australia should pivot towards, he's very quite vocal. He says Australia should pivot towards – he's very much of the view that Australia should pivot towards Asia, towards China. He says our most important partner is not Britain or America,

it's Indonesia. When they signed – do you remember when the Australians, Scott Morrison, signed that AUKUS deal with Britain and America? Yeah. Keating came out and said, should never have signed this deal. We shouldn't be getting into bed with what he called the jaded and faded Anglosphere.

And we should be doing deals with our Asian neighbours. Which is the perspective of New Zealand, pretty much. Yeah. So, yeah, that's the strain in Australia and New Zealand. He's Prime Minister until 96, when he loses the election to John Howard, the little desiccated coconut with the eyebrows. And John Howard is a, you know, I mean, he's a very, very long serving, very successful prime minister. So I think we should take a break at this point. And when we come back, we will.

The final, the final segment of this mighty Antipodean odyssey through the history of Australian prime ministers. So we'll see you then. showbiz gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. G'day, welcome back to The Rest Is History. We have reached the reign of John Howard, who was Prime Minister for, it seemed like forever, didn't it? Yes. So 11 years, 1996 to 2007. I'll be frank.

I don't find John Howard an immensely exciting political personality. What is exciting is that he's genuinely descended from convicts. So he's descended from a convict who was transported for stealing a watch. However, so he's a very substantial figure, isn't he? He's on the Anglophile, monarchist, conservative right. Great pals

with George W. Bush. Yes. Very great pals. And he is the second longest serving Australian Prime minister after Menzies. And he's a rather Menzies-esque figure. More British than the British. I wouldn't go that far. I mean, I think essentially the fact, I think that rather like Blair and Brown benefit from Kenneth Clarke's stewardship of the economy. Yeah. I think that Howard benefits from Keating's stewardship of the economy.

Yeah. I think that Howard benefits from Keating's stewardship of the economy. And I think that the Australian economy is in such good fettle for his premiership that essentially he doesn't really need to do anything. It just kind of chugs along. Yeah. Although he does, in foreign affairs, he's very activist, isn't he? Yeah, he's very into the war on terror.

Yeah, he is. I mean, George Bush regards him as a personal friend during the height of the war on terror. And he's probably the most enthusiastic, most overtly enthusiastic. Because, I mean, Tony Blair does the sort of act of sort of, there's a sense of him agonizing about the right path, I suppose, isn't there? Howard's right, he's straight in.

Yeah, straight in there. He's a devout i suppose isn't that he's straight in yeah straight in there straight he's a devout christian howard and he's also very pleasingly for you tom a massive cricket fan yeah well this is a bit of a theme isn't it it is are there any australian prime ministers who haven't been who say i couldn't i hate it i can't stand cricket i'm sick i don't know there must be but maybe it's something that you can't admit i mean like british prime ministers you know can't admit they don't like football. They can, though. They can really.

They know really. They will have to pretend. Look at Dave Cameron. Yeah, I couldn't even remember. Well, I mean, he's... Which one it was. Yes. One thing that rises and falls under Howard is the figure of Pauline Hanson.

Yes. She's kind of been aligned to the Liberal Party but she is very hostile to the end of the non-white the end of the white Australia policy I maybe maybe I'm being a bit unfair to them maybe it's a bit more nuanced than that but basically she's she is kind of Nigel Farage on steroids yeah that's right and and Howard is also, you know, he's well known in Europe for his very, very sort of stern immigration policy, isn't he? Yeah, but it gets sterner, which we'll come to. Right. So anyway, so basically what we're saying is we haven't got a lot to say about him.

Well, even though he's a very substantial figure in Australia. But of course, with him, I think that's sort of the point, isn't it? Yes. in Australia. But of course, with him, I think that's sort of the point, isn't it? That his sort of stolidity, you know, he's a bald man with glasses. Yeah, he's the George V of Australian Prime Ministers. He absolutely is. I mean, he appeals to these people who are called Howard Battlers, and they

are, I suppose, the Australian equivalent of what in America people used to call Reagan Democrats. In Britain, you know, the Red Wall. We call it the Red Wall, don't we? And he appeals to these people who are sort of aspirational, striving. Working class. Yeah, sort of upper working class, lower middle class,

self-consciously kind of respectable. They like all the stuff about law and order. They like about strong borders, all that sort of stuff. They don't want anything airy-fairy. And he's very – I mean, it's a little bit like Robert Mensah's The Forgotten People, The Forgotten Australians. Anyway, so a long period of stolidity, of continuity. He wins four elections. Then he gets defeated and he actually loses his seat.

So that's the end of his career. That's pretty extraordinary, isn't it? And in a further humiliation, he gets nominated by Australia and New Zealand to lead the International Cricket Council and he gets rejected. Really? Yeah. So very sad for him. Why was he rejected?

Because this is when India is starting to really flex its muscles as the cricket superpower. Right. And I think they're fed up with, you know, Englishmen and Australians running the show. So I think, I can't't remember but i think that's i think that's the reason but a bit like you know a long the long reign of a medieval king being succeeded by absolutely bloody civil war this is what now happens in australian politics because yeah howard's reign ends and he's beaten in the election by labor, led by Kevin Rudd, who's an impressive figure, studied Chinese, spoke Mandarin, been a diplomat. But essentially, over the course of the 2010s, it's like the Wars of the Roses, Game of Thrones.

It's just a kind of constant everyone knifing each other. People get assassinated, they come back to life, they kill the person who's assassinated them and so it goes on it's all a bit confusing well this is the culture of spills isn't it and i i i wonder whether it's just actually a um it becomes a kind of institutional cultural thing that once you've got into this kind of habit of having a spill every two years there's just no reason not to keep having them well it's like the roman empire in the third century a.d it is you know once you start bumping off emperors you think yeah why not just keep going yeah which they do it's weird it's weird because in a way i mean australia negotiates the 2008 crash perhaps more successfully than any other major industrialized nation so there's a you know the crash happens rudd brings in a

stimulation package and australia avoids recession while everybody else is kind of going tanking. And yet clearly there are strains and stresses. But maybe, I mean, that's, you could argue though, Tom, that the stability of Australian life is precisely what allows this culture of almost frivolous. Yeah, so it's a spectator show. Yeah, of almost sort of frivolous politics for its own sake. Although, I mean, the person who commits the first assassination, you would not describe as frivolous because that's Julia Gillard. From Bali. Yeah, so maybe.

Is she the first Welsh prime minister since Lloyd George? I think she is because she's, yes. She moved to Australia when she was five, I think. And she got given a little toy koala and she dropped it. No. Where is it? On the ship. Where is it?

In the Pacific somewhere. Still there. At the bottom of the Pacific, yeah. So that was very sad. And she, going back to the religious theme, she's from a Baptist background. But I think she sort of gave up her faith. Well, she is is if you imagine the guardian will you ever seen your female as a female australian prime minister that's what

she's like she's the guardian newspaper in human form she is yes um she's a lawyer she is uh feminist um and she doesn't have children she's not married she doesn't have children and this will become um a topic of criticism among people on the right of the liberal party yeah let's say um so she she is uh rudd's deputy prime minister she is the minister of education um and basically she ends up feeling that it's her moral duty to stab rudd in the back yeah so she does so she does um and she uh there's then a hung parliament and she's able to cobble together a majority by kind of sucking up to the green there's one green mp i think three independents um so very very slightly unstable government She's an okay prime minister, I think.

She's always being attacked, isn't she? So there's sort of an air of controversy around her, as far as I recall, from the moment she became, partly, I suppose, because she'd become PM as a result of assassination. And she has this huge feud with Tony Abbott. So Tony Abbott is basically the daily mail in, in human form. So it's the guardian against the daily mail.

Yeah. But I think, I think, I mean, I think that, that she is the kind of, um, very well-educated progressive female leader who rubs the backs up,

um, deplorables, as Hillary Clinton would describe them. So I think there is an element definitely of, we talked right at the beginning, of the way that the idea of mateship can be quite tough for women to negotiate. Yeah. And I think Gillard suffers from that.

And it leads to probably the thing for which he's most famous which is a speech he gives in in parliament where she gets accused by tony abba of of being a misogynist and she's so kind of outraged by this the very idea that she could be a misogynist and it's abbott who's accusing of being misogynist that she kind of launches into this great peroration which goes viral yes i will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. By this man. If he wants to know what misogyny looks like, he doesn't need a motion in the House of Representatives.

He needs a mirror. That's what he needs. It's a shame she doesn't do it in a Welsh accent. I know. I know. Anyway, so she's Prime Minister for three years. And then do you know who knifes her? Well, you do. You've got my notes. Is it Kevin Rudd? Yeah. That's very game of thrones he makes a comeback yes it's like henry the sixth succeeding out of the fourth you know it scrambles all your timelines so he he does that but he's

only got three months in power because he's then defeated by tony abbott i mean that was he he did it didn't he because he basically said we can't win an election under julia gillard yeah so he stabbed her in the back and then he promptly lost the election himself. Yes. Yes. And then, so Tony Abbott, so Tony Abbott is, so Tony Abbott, I suppose you would say, is a very good representative of that other strain in Australian politics that we talked about from the beginning, which is much more overtly pro-British.

I mean, he's got, he's... Well, he is, I mean, he's born in London. Yeah, and his father is English. Yeah. And he's another Rhodes Scholar, Queen's Oxford. Yeah. Again, there's the religious thing, Tom.

So he's a trainee priest. He was a seminarian at one point. And so his nickname is the Mad Monk. The Mad Monk. And I see you've written in the notes, quite daily mail in his political views. So the thing for which he is notorious in Australia is that he reintroduced knighthoods and damehoods, which Gough Whitlam had got rid of. And the person he gives the knighthood to is friend of the show and God, philip which is such an odd one yeah but you think prince

philip you know i mean he probably doesn't need it no i know that it's a very odd that he wouldn't be the first if i were prime minister of australia i brought back knighthoods which i would i don't think prince philip would be the first no shane warne arisene. What did I suppose to say? Arise, Sir Shane. Yeah. Could you give Ian Botham an Australian knighthood? That's what I'd do. I don't think he'd accept it, would he? No, of course he wouldn't. He's a slight climate change sceptic. Why give Prince

Philip an honour when he's already... I don't know, Dominic, calm down! Prince Philip is already... He's not only a god, he's a prince. He doesn't need the knighthood. No. Well, this is why it was controversial in Australia. They were all saying exactly the same... He's not only a god, he's a prince. He doesn't need the knighthood. No. Well, this is why it was controversial in Australia. They were all saying exactly the same. It's absolute madness.

Right, carry on, Tom. Sorry, I... Well, I was saying about the climate change stuff, that obviously the Australian economy is booming in large part. It's not just the kind of careful stewardship of Kevin Rudd and John Howard or whatever. It's because China's appetite for the raw materials that australia can supply china with is is absolutely voracious australia is therefore you know the economy is dependent on doing kind of things that environmentalists want them to stop doing yeah which is also why

another theme in australian politics over the past decade past decade means that kind of fires, bushfires, whatever, rising temperatures are very politically sensitive. They're not seen as just acts of God. They're seen as divine punishment for Western Australia's mining industry. But of course, Western Australia is dependent

on that very industry. And the difficulty for the politicians is that they're they're caught aren't they between the demands of fighting climate change but also you know it's it's a tough gig for any politician to say it is a tough gig you know part of your you need to give up this incredibly i think i think as an australian politician you have two alternatives one is to be a hypocrite or one is to be kind of say it's all nonsense right and tony abbott was that it's all nonsense. And Tony Abbott was the it's all nonsense school. But the other thing for which Abbott is probably most famous in Britain at the moment, because he's quite an influence on Priti Patel and Bryce Johnson trying to solve migrants coming over in boats from Calais, is Operation Sovereign Borders, which is the policy that people

who get picked up in boats get taken to, they're not brought to Australia. They're kind of given to processing centre outside Australia. Yes. And that's obviously been, you know, very influential on... The only way to dissuade people seeking to come from afar is not to let them in. That's Abbott's credo, isn't it? Yeah.

So, I mean, certainly from the perspective of a Julia Gillard, he's a kind of unregenerate pitbull of a right-wing politician. I mean, I suppose what you get with Australian politics, though, which is in a way you could argue quite refreshing, is that it's so full-throated compared with let's say british politics isn't it it's so kind of unapologetically what it is so the right-wing politicians are incredibly right-wing or or at least you know their rhetoric is incredibly you know sort of full-on and the same is true i think with the left-wing politicians i mean you see these i said before about the

if you ever see footage of debates in the australian legislature i mean you see these i said before about the if you ever see footage of debates in the australian legislature i mean they're absolutely going for each other with no holds barred yeah in this sort of you know there's no sort of pretense of elegance and and sort of honorable member no they're just absolutely i mean parliamentary language paul keating called the his opponent scumbags yeah yeah yeah uh anyway so um the bloodletting continues because tony abbott after two years in power gets knifed by um another liberal who's kind of liberal-ish so more moderate could it could as easily have become a labor politician um a guy called malcolm turnbull yeah who is in australia Australia. So he is the second Australian prime minister

to have gone to Brasenose College in Oxford. And he was prime minister of Australia at the same time as David Cameron, who also went to Brasenose College. Were they there at the same time? That's the question. No, but they're prime ministers at the same time. And they are one of two pairings of prime ministers

who both went to the same Oxford College. Do you know the other? So the ministers who both went to the same Oxford College. Do you know the other? So the two prime ministers went to the same college and they were prime ministers at the same time. They're two Commonwealth prime ministers or two Anglo-Australian. Commonwealth. Commonwealth. I'll give you a clue. They're both women.

So it's Theresa May. No. No. Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher. Somerville. Yeah. So Somerville and. No. No. Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher. Somerville. Yeah. Is it Somerville?

And Indira Gandhi. Oh, golly, that is a good fact. That's a great. That is a very good fact. There's a great drama to be written there, Tom, about them reminiscing about their days at Somerville together. So the other thing for which Malcolm Turnbull is famous in Britain is that he played a leading role in defending Peter Wright,

who was a rather seedy MI5 agent yeah or was he MI6 I can't remember who who published a book called Spycatcher which you'll know all about Dominic because it's it's all about Harold Wilson yes he claimed that he and uh lots of other MI5 agents had conspired against Harold Wilson when Harold Wilson was Prime minister of britain in the 1970s and so mrs satcher brought in the official secrets act didn't she yes to try and said you can't publish it and so he published it in australia and so the full might of the british uh um civil service kind of the the most elegant yes minister type mandarins went over there and were humiliated by turnbull it Is it economical with the truth?

I think Robert Armstrong, the Robert Armstrong, who was head of the British Civil Service, was kind of admitted basically to having lied. So it was all a disaster. And on top of that, Turnbull was a very prominent Republican. Which is interesting given that he's on the right of Australian politics. Yeah. So that's why he could easily have been Labour.

Because he was the chair wasn't he of the campaign for a republic and because they had a referendum in 1999 yeah so yes he's very much on the sort of the the softer wing i suppose of the australian right but surprise surprise he doesn't sit easily on the on the throne for long does he what has he got three years and then he's knifed by the abbots the, does he? What has he got, three years? And then he's knifed by the abbots, the abbotists. What were the abbotists? Yes. Would they be called the abbotists?

I suppose, yes. The abbotards. The bad monks. And he was succeeded by Scott Morrison. Now, Scott Morrison has, of course, as our listeners will now know. May he no longer be prime minister. There will no Scott Morrison's fate. By the time you listen to this.

And I have to say of Scott Morrison, to me, he just looks like a man at a garden center i don't really have anything to say about he looks like a koala do you think so yeah he knocked somebody over he looked he knocked a child over he was playing football and he kind of he did a boris johnson basically yes and also that was very funny he was he was out campaigning and giving a speech on uh on a lawn and the bloke whose lawn it was came out and said, get off my lawn. Yes, that's true. So that was fun. That was very nicely sort of egalitarian Australian, I thought.

He did just get off the lawn. He was like, oh, sorry, and he got off the lawn. But he seems the kind of man to whom these things happen. Slightly gaffe-brained. So his big gaffe was that in 2019-20, that summer in Australia, there were terrible, terrible bushfires. And you remember talking koalas, all the koalas burnt to death. It was absolutely awful, kind of the highest temperatures Australia had ever known. And he was on holiday in Hawaii.

Oh, that's right, yes. And this did not go down well. And the other thing, I guess, for which he's recently been, I mean, he had a good COVID, I think. I mean, he managed it quite well. He maintained Fortress Australia and then brought the vaccine in. So Australia's death rate's been much lower than it was in Europe. But he, and Alcas, you said the submarine deal. Oh, yeah.

He annoyed the French. Yeah. But he kind of presided over the Djokokovic debacle right that's right yes was it a debacle i mean well i think he was trying to leverage it because he had the election coming up and he thought it would play well yeah i think they all got scrambled with kind of government you know uh federal and state that's right yeah levels so anyway and also he's a pentecostalist is he does he speak in tongues I don't know if he does. I mean, I think he kind of periodically in interviews,

he's intimated that he does. But he's never done it in an interview. Yeah. He does think that trolls on social media are literally emanations of the devil. Well, that will be a relief to you, Tom, when you get abuse from academics. Yeah. Satan is speaking. Yeah so so we'll see so the question is i mean obviously that culture of spills is ridiculous and probably very damaging to good government because it just means you know prime ministers have come and go within two years and presumably spent an enormous amount

of time watching their backs watching their backs do, I mean, we talked about some of these Robert Menzies and, you know, Bob Hawke and so on, Goff Whitlam. Do you think it's fair to say that the standard has declined? I don't know enough about Australian politics to say that. But my feeling is that we always think that the politicians who are more recent are less effective. Of course we do of course because we always can't you know we're already we're looking back and saying oh you know remember

theresa may what golden days of theresa may and jeremy corbyn what giants they were well i think i mean because people often say this about british politics which has also been very unstable in the last 10 years or so at the top and the one thing that occurs to me is just i mean it's true people have always said the standards have were falling there's never a point where people didn't bemoan the collapse in political leadership. But the fact that people always say it doesn't therefore mean that it's not true, that it can never fall. I mean, I think Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison, Tony Abbott, are they of the same stature as the prime ministers? Are they genuinely of the same stature as the prime ministers of the 1940s and 1950s?

Or are we only saying that because the context is different because we're less deferential? You know, these are difficult questions. I think Hawking and Keating were clearly exceptional politicians, but also exceptional. They weren't just politicians. They were masters of the art of politics but they put it to to purposes that were very influential not just you know within the context of australian politics but internationally yeah so in a sense they blazed the path for clinton and blair and schroeder and all that kind of tradition um and i think that that since then australia's

circumstances because of its you know it has all these mineral resources and it has this relationship with china has meant that it slightly uncoupled itself from trends within say europe or america right but i think that that relationship with china which has been an issue in australian politics right from the point of federation is becoming more unstable again, which is why Scott Morrison signed that. The AUKUS. Yeah, the AUKUS deal.

Okay. Well, we don't know, obviously, the results of the Australian election. When we did our first podcast, we thought this would be coming out in the wake of the Australian. I mean, there may have been several prime ministers. Yeah. So the first one we'll look at this will be what four or five days

after the elections yeah so who knows given their enthusiasm yeah given their enthusiasm for stabbing the other in the back but the thing that i suppose the real for me the real revelation of this is just how incredibly interesting australian politics is and the the irony that in britain we are so ignorant of it and we think of it as just unbelievably boring yeah absolutely i think it's true but i think it has been quite influential so i think you know we talked tony abbott's immigration policies have been influential on conservatives here um the hawk keating governments were very very influential on blair and brown um so i think that, you know, absolutely,

politicians certainly are alert to Australia. Yeah. Jolly good. All right. Well, thank you very much for bearing with us for three episodes of what was meant to be a short gallop. Yes. So, I mean, Dominic, when we began this podcast,

would you have thought we'd do three episodes or not? I didn't, but I mean, that was several days ago. So will you give us one more blast, please, Mr Music, of your didgeridoo to play us out? Okay. Goodbye. Good day. Good day. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History.

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