The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 195. Can the West Reclaim its Power from Trump? (Malcolm Turnbull)

Episode Date: June 28, 2026

As Western nations become increasingly dependent on the US for AI, satellite infrastructure, and defence, are they sacrificing sovereignty in exchange for American security? Can middle powers such as Australia and the UK pursue genuinely independent foreign and defence policies when a Trump-led America prioritises its own interests? Is AUKUS a genuine security partnership, or is Australia bankrolling American and British interests? Alastair and Rory are joined by Malcolm Turnbull, former Prime Minister of Australia, to discuss all of these questions and more. __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [e-mail] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Josh Smith Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Senior Producer: Nicole Maslen General Manager: Tom Whiter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members' chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the rest is politics.com. We cannot ignore the reality of Trump. Donald Trump has said the rules-based order is bullshit. That's what he said. America's intent towards us, America's closest allies, may not be benign. Ten years ago, you would have said that's a discipline. Orcus is a really bad deal for Australia. We're pouring billions and billions of Australian taxpayers' dollars

to support a British shipbuilding industry and submarine industrial base that cannot build submarines in any timely fashion. Is Rupert Murdoch evil? I don't think you would have had Brexit without Rupert. I don't think you would have had Trump without Rupert. Rupert has been the loudest, most influential single voice to stand against action on global warming. Brexit, Trump and climate denial.

I don't think that's a great list of people. That's a great list of achievements. This episode is presented by IG. So whether it's the vetting of senior political appointments or its costly policy U-turns, the last few months of UK politics have been a masterclass in what happens when you don't do your homework. And the consequences, as we've seen, can ripple out far beyond the initial decision. And the same rules apply when choosing your investment platform, because picking the wrong one can hit you directly and in a very measurable way.

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Introducing Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg, a new fit that moves with you. It's everything you want denim to feel like for summer. Easy, breathable, and effortlessly cool. With a fit that creates natural movement and a wide leg that feels modern, not overwhelming. Plus, that signature, wait, for this price? Moment. Old Navy's drape you denim wide leg. Welcome to the rest of this politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. And we're absolutely delighted to be with Malcolm Turnbull, who was Australia's

29th Prime Minister. His political rise came after a very successful career as a banker, but also one of Australia's top barristers, who was already famous in the UK as the lawyer, who prosecuted the case against the Thatcher government's efforts to ban. a book written by a guy called Peter Wright, who was a former MI5 spy. He was a Rhodes Scholar, studied at Brazos College, Oxford, and spycatcher was not his only running with the British establishment, because he also led the referendum campaign to try to remove Rory's beloved Her Majesty the Queen as Australia's head of state. Now Malcolm Turnbull's term in office, September 2015 to August 2018, roughly coincided or overlapped with Donald Trump's first term,

so doubtless the Trump word will come up from time to time. But he had two spells as the leader of the Liberal Party. That's Australia's equivalent of our Tories. He was ousted twice on both occasions in part because the right wing of his party did not like his progressive stance on climate. He can also point to same-sex marriage in Australia as part of his legacy. And he labels himself as the sensible centre. Hence, fairly regular criticism of his Liberal Party.

thinks it's going too far to the right to compete with one nation, their populist right-wing party, and also his fairly frequent denunciations of Rupert Murdoch. Now, my first direct experience of an Australian Prime Minister was Paul Keating, one of my Labour heroes. Then in came John Howard of the Liberal Party, who was Prime Minister for more than 11 years. Since him, there have been six more Prime Ministers, and only one current incumbent Anthony Albanese has lasted more than four years. So Britain is not the only country to suffer this prime ministerial churn with our half dozen since the Brexit referendum a decade ago. So Malcolm, thank you very much for being with us and really looking forward to talking to you. Yeah, great to be with you both. Prime Minister,

sir, can we start you maybe right at the moment? So our Defence Secretary in Britain just resigned just in the middle of negotiations with the Australian Defence Secretary linked to this Orca submarine purchase, and that takes us right into the heart of China, Trump, defense. Can we start with that? What would you be doing if you were the Prime Minister of Australia dealing with the world at the moment? And let's maybe use Orcus as the route in, this great submarine contract as the route in.

I think that Orcus is a really bad deal for Australia. The proposition is that Australia is acquiring naval nuclear propulsion for submarines. The short-term fix is to acquire second-hand Virginia-class submarines. submarines from the United States. This is in the 2030s. The United States has made it very clear they can't sell them to us unless they can spare them. And their industry is not producing enough for their own needs, let alone ours. So the likelihood is we won't get any subs from the Americans. As far as the UK shipbuilding is concerned, I think the British government at the time did a brilliant job conning Scott Morrison into agreeing to this because we're pouring billions

and billions of Australian taxpayers' dollars to support a British shipbuilding industry and submarine industrial base that cannot build submarines in any sort of timely fashion for the Royal Navy, can't maintain them. Most of your submarine fleet, your SSNs can't go to sea. You know, there's, I mean, this is a big, big issue in UK circles. It's this dreadful lack of investment in the UK submarine industrial base. that's got you into that situation. By contrast, France is doing a much better job, I might say. You know, I think, to be honest, I mean, Paul Keating, Alistair mentioned him, Paul summed it up really well when Orcas was announced in San Diego. He said there are three leaders at this

jamboree in San Diego, but there's only one of them bringing the money. And sadly, that's our bloke. You know, that's afraid where it is. So I'm not sure what the answer is. If I was the British Prime Minister, I'll tell you what I would do, I would pick up the phone to Macron, and I would say Britain and France should partner on the new French SSN, the suffering class, which the French Navy is getting. They're getting six of those. They're being built. They're being delivered. They're a real thing. Partner on those, and then the Australians would come along with that as well. That would be the sensible outcome. But you know, you guys know the animosities across the channel better than I do. I've never been able to understand them, but they're very intense.

So there it is. So I'm sorry. I don't have, I'm not, I'm not a fan of the deal, but I'm an Australian, you see, so I just got my own country's interest to look after. Where would you put these sort of different countries and organisations in terms of the Australian political mindset, which is the most important? China, US, Japan, European Union, UK. Well, I think, the most important it would be a toss-up between China and the US, for sure. I mean, the US is our great strategic partner, but our biggest economic partner, trading partner, is China. You know, also there's, you know, with population of 27 million, there's probably now well

over one and a half million Australians of Chinese heritage, including two of our four grandchildren. So, you know, China is very important to Australia at many, many levels. And we do not want to be put in a position of choosing between China and the United States. You know, the UK is important, I suppose, in a historical family connection, but it doesn't feature a lot in our geopolitical thinking, orcas notwithstanding. And the European Union's obviously important because it's big. and, you know, we've got many, many connections there.

We look like we're getting a free trade deal done with the Europeans at long last, which a process I kicked off, I might say, many years ago, but which got dynamited by the Orcus. So you guys would remember the French were very aggrieved. They were misled and lied to. And, you know, with court withdrew their ambassadors and so forth. And Japan? Well, Japan. Yes, Japan is, again, Japan is important.

seen as a strategic partner in a way that just would have been unthinkable to, say, my parents' generation. Australians generally regard Japan with great affection. There is now a lot of tourism between Australia and Japan. So, yes, Australians are very familiar with Japan. Please, please, welcome. It's really sweet of you, Rory. You've been in the US too long.

But let's not fall into that. There's only one person, in my view, There's only one person you should call Prime Minister, and that's the Prime Minister. Very good. Malcolm. Just call me Malcolm. Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. So Malcolm, we're also doing this interview, not just on the cusp of massive fight around UK defence and orcus, but also just at the moment at which the US government has announced that the latest large language model,

big AI model from Anthropic, will not be released to people who are not US nationals. And again, it's a reminder of this question of dependence. on the US, the way we depend on them for cloud computing, the dollar payment systems, AI, etc. And what kind of vulnerabilities that might bring and how that dependency could be weaponized? How would you think that's true? How does one deal in a world in which dependency on the US seems like more of an issue than it might have done 10 years ago? Well, it certainly does. I'm a great believer and I've talked about it when I was in office, before I was in office, since I was in office, in strategic autonomy. The only people we can rely on in a pinch are

ourselves, are our fellow countrymen and women. And so if you're an Australian or if you're a Brit, you've got to look to your own sovereignty. Sovereignty really matters. Again, this is one of the other problems with Orcas. It's a sacrifice sovereignty for the sake of security. And as the French foreign minister said at the time, we'll end up with us losing both. And I think he was right. In terms of the US, I mean, look, we have, Australia and the UK, each of us have very, very close ties with the US. We feel very much at home, but we cannot ignore the reality of Trump. You know, Donald Trump has said the rules-based order is bullshit. That's what he said.

I didn't use that word. What the national defence strategy said was, and I quote, it is a cloud castle abstraction. Now, you know, that's a posh way of saying it's BS. He says might is right. He says America first. He is prepared to use the dependencies that close friends and allies have developed over time as leverage in order to extract advantage for the United States at the expense of the United States friends.

So this is a gigantic change. And we can't, you know, we can say, well, maybe the United States. This is a blip, and it'll all be over in a couple of years. I don't think so. I think there's a big change. And, you know, we have to. Mark Carney spoke very eloquently about it at Davos earlier in the year. We've got to focus on ourselves, our own sovereignty,

and seek to mitigate those dependencies wherever we can. Because, you know, the US we all grew up with is not the US we are dealing with today, very sadly, and a big mistake on their part, but it's not. We have to look at the world in a clear-eyed manner. Your time in office coincided, as I said, with much of Trump's first terms. You had a lot to deal with him during that period. First of all, how did you find that? But secondly, what do you see as the big differences in Trump term one and Trump term two? I had never done business with Trump, so I didn't know him, but I knew a lot, I knew a lot of people who knew him very well, right? And so we knew a lot about each other. I was very fortunate

in that our first proper interaction was a gigantic row. I had done a deal with Barack Obama to resettle asylum seekers that were detained on islands in the Pacific. Detained by Kevin Rudd, I might have, but that's another story. The deal with Obama was that they would be resettled in the United States, and in return, we would help the Americans out for some of their asylum-seeker issues. When I say that it was a deal, it began in the Oval Office with a handshake,

but it was a signed agreement between the two governments, you know, the United States of America, the Commonwealth of Australia. We were initially told by Trump's people that he would stick with it. He obviously didn't like the deal, and he would stick with it. Then, just before I was due to have a call with him,

His national security adviser rang mine. Mike Pence rang my deputy, Julie Bishop, and said, the PM must not mention that this is not going to happen. President's not going to do it. So actually, I had to raise it with him. And we had a big argument about it, which got very, very heated, really heated. I was saying, essentially, we expect the United States to stick to its word. You know, this is, as I said, you're like a new CEO. You know, you've taken over a company, you've inherited a contract you don't like, you can

criticize it, you can say your predecessor was an idiot, but you've still got to stick with it. You know, take a write down if you like, but you've got to stick with it. Anyway, it was very rowdy call and he was furious. He ended up saying, you know, that it was the worst call he had all day. It was even worse than talking to Putin. Although he's very friend. So maybe he's Lucy tried to console me later and said, that's really just like him saying, your second best boyfriend. But anyway, it was a big row. But the good thing about it was that he stuck

to the deal. And because I'd stood up to him and because he's a bully, he respected that. And after that, the relationship went very well. Because the thing about Trump is that if you suck up to him, which is what most people stupidly do, you will just get more bullying. The only way to deal with the guy is to stand your ground. And if you don't do that, frankly, if you're a leader and you're not prepared to do that, you should give the job away to someone else you can. And term two, do you see a very different trump this time around? Well, yeah, turn two. Look, it's the same guy. He's obviously older. The big difference is in term one, he didn't expect to win. He wasn't prepared. He didn't have a plan. And he had people working for him in the White House. Many of

were very good. And they would routinely tell him not to do things or seek to steer him in, you know, more conventional channels. And everyone in the world pretty much expected that would work. I mean, I remember Xi Jinping and I talked about Trump after he'd won the election, but before he was in office. And President Xi was quite relaxed about him. He thought he would be sort of institutionalized by the machinery. of government. Anyway, and naturally that didn't work. Second time around, very different. His team has totally devoted to him. The principal criterion for selection is loyalty to the boss. He's got a project, Project 25, whatever it's called, but the Heritage Foundation wrote for him.

And so it's very, very different. This is a much more cohesive, Trump too, and with it much more of an agenda. Having said that, as we've seen with the Iran excursion, he's capable of running off script and off agenda any time he likes. Just to finish off this question of US dependency on AI, the problem with us developing strategic autonomy, let's say Australia, Canada, UK, Europe, wanted strategic autonomy, we're dealing with a US that is going to spend $740 billion over the next couple of years on building data centres and compute. And we're also looking at building a whole economy and public services on the back of these American large language models. How do we extract ourselves from that, given the incredible opportunities AI could bring,

but also the eye-watering cost and difficulty of us developing our own models? If we're dealing with the US, which is just signalled, they may not let us have access to the frontier models. Well, Rory, I'm not an expert on AI, or pretty much anything, to be honest. But I think the answer is you just have to try to find a way of giving yourself the autonomy that you need. Now, it may be, for example, that you don't want critical government services to be dependent on large language models that you feel you are at risk of being cut off from. For example, would you want your telecommunications to be dependent on Starlink? Now, it's a very good service. No question about that.

But would you want it all to be dependent on Starlink that, you know, Elon Musk could cut off at any time? You guys understand this as well as I do, if not better. I mean, a threat is the combination of capability and intent. Capability takes a long time to put in place, dependence on an AI model, a Starlink system, you know, a 5G system. Intent can change in a heartbeat. And so the thing that has changed the dynamic with the United States, that we've started to occur to us that America's intent towards us,

America's closest allies, may not be benign, right? I mean, we've always understood, like when I made the decision, or my government made the decision, to ban Chinese vendors from 5G in Australia, and we were way ahead of the UK on that. And in fact, we're ahead of the Americans. It's another story. And this was for technical reasons, not it was not in a political decision. We were not accusing Huawei of engaging an espionage or doing anything wrong at all, nothing like that. But we just took the view, this was a very big capability that Chinese would have in Australia. And can we assume that Beijing's intent

towards us would always be monite? Well, clearly not. But we always made that assumption with the Americans. And so this is the thing. I mean, I think a lot of us, when we're dealing with America under Trump, are struggling to come to terms not with a apocalyptic portrayal or scenario, but with the reality of what he's actually saying. Cynics, we used to say, oh, the Americans, you know, talk about democracy and freedom, that they don't actually believe it. You know, they're just out for themselves, you know, and you can argue about that. Trump actually says, I am out for myself, America first. And so if there is a, if you're sitting around the cabinet table in London today,

and somebody says, is there a risk, we have critical services depended on an American LLM, is there a risk that it could be leveraged or interfered with in order to disadvantage us vis-à-vis the US? Yes. Ten years ago, you would have said, that's just ridiculous. Is it ridiculous any longer? No. I think we both agree with you on that one.

Malcolm, can we wind back to the very start of your life? From what I've read, my sense, a pretty troubled childhood in that you had two parents who, seems to me, did not love each other, and that marriage eventually broke up, and you ended up essentially being raised by your dad. Can you just tell us a little bit about your parents and what impact do you think that had on you as a person, but also the politician that you became?

Well, I mean, this part of my backstory would appeal to you, Alistair in particular, my mother was a woman, you know, a writer, actor, later became a university professor called Coral Lansbury and related therefore to George Lansbury and that Labor family in the UK. My father, Bruce Turnbull, was a country boy, salesman, became a hotel broker. They got together. I was the product of that encounter. They got married. after I'm quite a while after I was born so so I am in fact a bastard in every respect I always I always like that line in King Lear you know now God stand up for bastards anyway they they split up they quarreled my mother left when I was

about eight or thereabouts and I was yes I was brought up for most of my childhood by my father or much of it and I had a very very very close relationship with him he was a really a really admirable guy. The most important thing, and gosh, you see so much divorce nowadays, but he never criticised my mother at all, always spoke very positively about her to me. And so it never occurred to me that my mother had done something wrong by leaving us, because he just, he literally brainwashed me, your mother loves you, you know, etc., etc., and she'd gone to New Zealand and then the United States.

And so, and I remained in touch with us. So I had a, you know, I had a good, albeit somewhat distant relationship with it, you know, as a result. But, no, he was an extraordinary guy. And so the relationship with him was very close, but almost like a big brother, little brother relationship, as you'd expect. You know, you had two guys living together. Had advantages, though.

We didn't have a lot of money in those days. And I learned, so it became quite good domestic. for you know there's not not many men of my generation you know can cook or iron or wash or do all those domestic things because they had mothers doing it for them so I could do all those things what did Malcolm Turnbull the child what characteristics do you think you were developing at that time that turned you then into Malcolm Turnbull eventually the politician and the prime minister oh well I suppose you know very ambitious very hard-wereux very hard-wereux working, determined to do well, prove myself to my parents, you know, that sort of thing.

Yeah. Common tray and successful people, I suppose. The next stage in your life is an interesting one because you eventually end up as a road scholar. And I think there's a sort of tradition of that too in Australian politics. If I'm right, Bob Hawke, maybe Kevin Rudd possibly. Well, Bob, Kevin wasn't a road scholar, but Kevin easily could have been. Tony Abbott, maybe? Tony Abbott's a Rhodes Scholar, absolutely, yeah. Certainly Kevin Rudd's quite geeky.

So there's a sort of tradition in Australian politics of these quite kind of formidable intellectual figures, even if you try yourself in different ways. Was that a particular thing going on in Australian politics at a particular time, or was that just a coincidence? And is that true of Australian politics today? Because Pauline Hansen doesn't seem to be from the same tradition. I'm just trying to sort of work out the sociology of this whole thing. No, she's not from the same tradition. No, look, I don't think the, I don't know, I mean, there are, I would think there are more, you know,

academically gifted people probably in the House of Commons and there are in the House of Representatives in Australia. I'm not sure, but certainly, you know, our political, I mean, one of the things that makes our political system different, and this is where we've got more in common with the US, is Australia is a very big country geographically. And so everyone who's a member of the House Representatives or the Senate, apart from the handful that represent Canberra,

have to come from somewhere else. And so you don't get that sort of intimacy that you get in the UK where almost all of your politicians most of the time are living in and around London. That's a different atmosphere. But look, I think, yeah, the roads. scholars of, I mean, some of them are, some of them have done well, some of them haven't. I'll tell you a story about road scholars, if you like.

My father, I told you he was a hotel broker. And when I won a road scholarship, I called him and he was out at a, uh, inspecting a pub. He was going to sell out at North St. Mary's, which is way out in western, you know, northwestern Sydney. You know, in those days, that was a pretty rough pub, that particular pub, the North St. Mary's hotel. I rang him and told him this and, you know, he's very pleased and then 10 minutes later he calls me back and he's said, I'm coming into town, I've got to celebrate with you. He said, I've told the publican here that you've won the Rhodes Scholarship and he replied by saying that's fantastic because he's got a cousin who works at the Department of Main Roads and he must introduce it.

So it was a good sort of a good reality check, you know, for those things. We're very, very lucky to have these very talented politicians from around the world come and study at British universities, which is what a road scholarship is. But sometimes we observe, as I think probably happened with Bill Clinton, who came over on a road scholarship. And in a different way, probably happened with the ruler of the United Arab Emirates who came over to Santos. that it doesn't always leave the visitor with a very positive view of Britain. They can return thinking we're a little bit stuffy and stuck up and return with a slightly skeptical view of the United Kingdom. How did your experience at Oxford shape your view of the UK?

Well, look, I really enjoyed it. I mean, I had a job for about half the time I was at Oxford. I had a job working for the Sunday Times because I'd got to know Harry Evans before I went to Oxford, actually. He'd heard me speak in a debate somewhere, and offered me a job. I was a journalist in those days. And, you know, he was like God. Absolutely, he was God. And he was a great friend and mentor for me ever since. And indeed, Tina Brown, who I know you spoke to recently, is reigns a really good friend. So I didn't come away with

any negative feelings about the UK at all. I mean, the class system, Rory, is always a bit puzzling for Australians. We don't sort of understand it. Quite puzzling for Brits, let me tell you. Yeah, I mean, I just don't, I can't understand why people are hung up. Let me put it this, to give you this example. So I've lived in Sydney, you know, all my life. No one in Sydney has ever asked me where I went to school since I ceased to be a schoolboy. I mean, you know, when you see a boy, little boy, you'll say, hello, Johnny, you know, where are you at school? What's your favourite sport?

You know, do you like maths or something? You know, all these inane questions adults ask. Nobody's ever asked me that. I mean, you know, people have if they're interviewing you or it's a really getting to know you. Whereas in Melbourne, interestingly, they do. And Lucy, my wife, who was Lord Mayor of Sydney at one point, was once asked about this difference.

And Lucy said, well, the point is that the question in each case, in Sydney they ask you where you live, in Melbourne they ask you where you went to school. Each question is designed to put you in a social category, social context. The difference is you can never change where you went to school, but as to where you live, you could have bought a big house last week. Maybe if I was a Melbourneian, I would have found it more understandable. But for me, the interest in your antecedents and where you came from

as opposed to what you're doing right now and what you're going to do tomorrow, I found that curious. It didn't worry me, but I found it curious. But I've always had great affection for the UK and felt very much at home there, although I was, you know, I did go through periods where I thought I might get thrown into a basement by MI5 over the spy catcher case.

I was going to come to that, because you took on two of the sort of titans of 20th century British history, Margaret Thatcher over spy catcher and the Queen when you headed the referendum campaign to try and get rid of her. So I just wondered what, they both feel kind of very

leftist, anti-establishment kind of position. So I wonder whether that was something that the seeds were sown when you were looking at this class system around Oxford. Yeah, not really. You know, I, no, I wouldn't say, I mean, the spy catcher case fell into my lap, Alistair. I mean, Peter Wright had written this book,

The British government had got an injunction to restrain it in Australia, which is where he lived. He'd had a big law firm advising the publishers that told him you couldn't win. Lots of QCs had said the same. And through a couple of connections, he ended up with me, and I'd just set up a law firm. You know, I'd been working for Kerry Packer for a few years, defending him legally. And then I'd had this law firm and he wandered in, and I agreed to do the case for $20,000, I recall. because I thought it was going to be really exciting and I thought we'd win. And that was an unfashionable view at the time and we did.

So it was really just a stroke of luck. But to my astonishment, the Brits didn't settle and they fought it all the way. You know, they lost, fought it all the way to a trial. And gosh, they fought hard too. I mean, we went to the Court of Appeal two or three times just on the interlocutary stages, you know, on the interrogatories and discovery. And they went all the way to the high court. But it was a great adventure.

40 years ago this year, by the way, 40 years ago this year. Tell us a little bit for the audience. So my memory of this is Peter Wright had been an MI5 officer. He wrote this book which was sensational or seemed to be a sensational tell-all about the inner workings of MI5 and allegations that senior MI5 officers might have been working with the Russians. And so from the point of view of the British establishment, this guy was somewhere between a renegade and a traitor. and here he was wanting to publish a book and everyone was very disproving. You got on his side.

So tell audiences that don't remember everything about it, a little bit about this case. Okay, well, we're in a good position now because a lot of this stuff has now been published in the Public Records Office. But the backstory was that Wright worked for MI5. He was essentially a mole hunter, and he was a technical guy originally. He was bugging, bugging embassies and bugging hotels and so forth. And he spent a lot of time, for example, he was a lot of time. example, debriefing Anthony Blunt and Cairn Cross, you know, who were two of the Cambridge Five

spiring. But he did develop an obsession, some might say an unhealthy obsession, that the one-time head of MI5, a guy called Roger Hollis, was also a Soviet agent. Anyway, this stuff about Hollis, he'd been agitating about this. By this stage, he's retired. He was put in touch with Chapman Pinscher. He'd remember was a very conservative journalist who worked for papers like the Express and the mail and so forth and wrote about espionage and was like an official conduit for the security agencies. And he was put in touch with Pinscher and Pinscher wrote a book about it called Their Trade is Tretary, which got all the hollis stuff out in the public domain. And then he wrote a second book called Too Secret Too Long, which did the same.

And so when Wright wanted to publish his book, in fact, pretty much everything and had already been published by Pinscher. So one of our arguments was, many arguments, one of the arguments was this stuff is not confidential anymore. And what was worse was that the publication by Pinscher had actually been connived in by the British government. Not only had they known Pinscher was about to publish his book and did nothing to restrain it, but in fact, fact, as we now know, through documents that have come out in the public records office, Sir Robert Armstrong, you know, who was Thatcher's Cabinet Secretary, as you recall, had actually recommended to Thatcher that Pinscher be briefed on the Hollis allegations so that it could be got out through the pen, effectively, of a safely conservative journalist.

So the spy-catcher case is also about the extraordinary hypocrisy of the British establishment. I mean, Armstrong came to Australia and lied in the witness box. You know, I couldn't get the judge to accept that he committed perjury, but he had to correct his evidence. He had to apologise to the court for misleading the court. He had that, you know, one-liner which he thought was funny. Economical with the truth. When I put to him some correspondence he'd written, which was misleading,

where I said, this is a lie. And, you know, he said, no, no, I was just being economical with the truth. ha, ha, ha. And of course, you know, just memo to self. Last place to joke about telling the truth is in a witness box when you're under oath. People, everyone doesn't think it's funny. But in fact, I put to Armstrong that the brief, that Pinscher had been effectively set up to do this, write this stuff about Hollis. And I might say the person who introduced right to Pinscher was Victor Rothschild.

So you can see why you can develop a few conspiracy theories here. So I put to Armstrong that Pinscher had been brought into this with the connivance of government. And Armstrong said, that is a very ingenious conspiracy theory, Mr. Turnbull, but utterly untrue. No, sorry, but quite untrue. Paused and then said utterly untrue,

just to be quite clear. In fact, it was utterly true. as Charles Moore acknowledges in his official biography of Thatcher. And, you know, as anyone can see, if you look at the memos in the public records office, there's actually a memorandum. It's quite quaint, really, he says to Thatcher, he says, ordinarily I would recommend dealing with someone like Mr. Pinscher with a very long spoon. However, on this occasion, I think we should.

And they got a guy, you might remember him, called Lord Rawlinson, who'd been attorney general, I think, at one point, who's a barrister, to be the cutout. And he briefed, he was given the stuff on Hollis and briefed Pinscher. And then Pinscher was put in touch with Wright by Victor Rothschild. And so part of our case was, this is just a whole lot of hypocrisy. Yeah. Did you buy into at all Peter Wright's suggestions that the security services were deliberately undermining the government of Harold Wilson? I couldn't, look, there's no doubt that Peter Wright, I think, some of them certainly had that view. I don't know. I couldn't go that far, Alistair.

Right. But there was definitely a view in those intelligence community circles that Wilson was, if not a Soviet agent, at least very close to people who were, who were, you know, connected to the, to the, you know, Soviets. So, yeah, I mean, it's a, it was a, it's a very dark and murky part of your history. And I mean, I think part of the problem with Spooks, and we've all dealt with them over the years in different capacities, is that when people are living in a secret world, it is very, very easy to develop conspiracy theories and to become very, very conspiratorial. I mean, I had an experience with this when I was first, you know, a very young lawyer before Spycatcher. when I defended Kerry Packer, I remember in the early 80s, he was accused of all sorts of crimes, you know, murder, drug trafficking, a whole lot of stuff by a Royal Commission that had gone, really run off the rails and had all these secret hearings.

And, you know, again, there's a lot of books written about this, but, and it was bonkers. But it's the kind of thing that happens. So that's why, you know, you need, that's why sunlight is so important. It's why transparency, oversight is so critically important. And whenever governments are saying, oh, it's classified, you can't look at this, you can't look at that. I accept some things have to be classified, but there are so much that goes on. Once you put that veil of secrecy over it, there is so much crazy stuff that will go on underneath that cloak. And which, of course, can end up misleading government, but also doing a lot of injustice.

And you led the Republican campaign. And I think it was Paul Keating, was he prime minister who put you in charge of that effectively? Looking back at that, do you think that was the closest Australia ever got to be coming, as it were, and a constitutional republic without our head of state as your head of state? And do you think that battle has gone forever? It's certainly the closest we've got to date. I don't think it's gone forever. I mean, it was, you know, unfortunately in our system,

I mean, we've got a couple of things in our electoral system, which I strongly commend to you in the UK, strongly commend to you. Compulsory voting. Compulsory voting. Yeah. Yeah. And preferential voting. I mean, if you guys don't move to both, or at least preferential voting, you'll

end up with a democracy with very little legitimacy because you'll have more and more people winning constituencies with a plurality of, you know, you know, you know, and you'll end up with, you know, 20% or something like that. I mean, it's just, it's, I think it's with a five-party system plus smaller parties and independence, first past the post doesn't work. But anyway, the problem that we have with referenda is that they need to be approved by a national majority and a majority in four out of six states. And we have compulsory voting for them as well. And in a compulsory voting environment, the people that don't know, don't care, aren't interested, who would normally stay at home

are the ones that will vote no. And so every referendum campaign, Albo went through this with the voice campaign a few years ago, every referendum campaign, the no votes say, if you don't know, vote, no. And people do.

And so we got, I think we're about 46.5% yes, and balance no, so that's why we lost. But, but yeah, I mean, look, it's, I mean, our constitution, you've got to remember, Australia was not an independent country in 2001.

Australians saw themselves as part of Britain. And in fact, they saw themselves as part of Greater Britain for a long time after that. So, you know, if Britain became a republic, if Rory became the president of the great British Republic. He would never get rid of the morning, never. I understand if Charles was going to abdicate for anyone, it would be for Rory. I've got the inside word from the palace on that. Okay, Malcolm, Rory, quick break, and then back for more.

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Please play responsibly. Let's now go right into the heart of Australian politics. And this is massively oversimplifying, but it does seem as though Australia has begun to take some of the disease that Britain, Europe and the United States has had. Alistra and I were cheerfully going around three years ago saying, thanks to compulsory voting and all the rest, Australia is never going to have a populist movement.

And we even had a line where we'd say they're so lucky they've got this person, Pauline Hans. as the head of One Nation, if they had, you know, genuinely kind of talented charismatic politician, they'd be screwed, but they don't, right? Fast forward three years, and now we're looking at a situation in which, as we're infuing you, One Nation, which is, I don't know how we want to describe it, but it's a sort of version of the far right. It's somewhere between MAGA and, I don't know, the Reform Party, is now regularly

polling up into the 30%, and the two main cornerstone parties, the equivalents, the equivalents, the mainstream right and left parties in Britain or France are down in the 20s. And you're now facing, I guess, the same challenge with the right, which Kemi Badernach, or I would be facing with the Conservative Party in Britain, which is how on earth do you work out how to deal with it? So you're going to tack to the right, which might be the kind of Tony Abbott view, or you're going to attack towards the teals, which might be your view. Am I right?

Before we get into the details of how you do it in Australia, am I right that in some sense Australia is now catching a global disease? It's too early to say definitively, but there are signs that we have. You've got to be careful about opinion polls, as we all know, tell you what people think on the day the poll has taken. And people are very sophisticated about opinion polls, and they'll say things to pollsters intending to send a message, right? So I don't think Pauline Hanson's going to be the next Prime Minister of Australia.

I might be proved wrong. I hope I'm not proved wrong. But I don't think she is. Our system of voting does tend to bring people to the centre. And I agree with you that One Nation looks like a counter-argument there. The One Nation support is very linked to the, you know, you can all get stuffed sort of anger that is being, you know, promoted through a lot of the right-wing media, particularly Murdox media, where we, you know, we have an equivalent of Fox News here

called Sky News. I mean, it's not very different to the Sky News in the UK. It's about to change its name, in fact, to remove that confusion. So I think there's that sort of angry attitude that's part of it. But I think Labor will win the next election, and I think they will win it because, they will say a vote for Hansen or a vote for the Liberal Party or the National Party is a vote for Hansen and they'll say, do you really want Pauline Hansen to be running your country? You may think she's courageous and blunt and says it like it is and authentic,

but do you actually want a running the show? You see, the curious thing that's happened in our system, and I was in the House of Commons recently actually the week of the King's speech. And I was, you know, fascinated to see some elements of the debate there and see Stama and Badenock perform. But the, you know, the, the, the, the interesting thing here is that we basically have only got one major party left at the centre. That's the Labour Party. See, the Liberal Party was, you know, as you guys know, you've said it earlier. Always, my problem in the Liberal Party was always the right wing of the party. I'd never had a lot of, I mean, the Labor Party were my political opponents, obviously,

but my problems were always with the right wing of the party, with the Murdoch media. And after I left, it kept moving further to the right. And what they have been doing is essentially trying to echo and emulate the right-wing populist arguments that one nation is putting. And the problem is the more you do that, the more you validate and legitimise the right-wing populist. See, if you're a centre-right party and you run off to the right, and you say, right, mass migration is the issue. That's mass migration is the issue. Then people say, OK, well, if that's the issue, I'll vote for the real deal, Paul in Hanson in Australia or Nigel Farage in your country. And so if you're a centre-

right party, again, you know, you guys have got, you know, just as much political experience as me, but, you know, if you're a centre-right party, my view is your only real political equity is economic management. You've got to steer down the centre and focus on economic management and say to people, well, you may not think we're as, you know, good on the environment or health or schools as the left, but, you know, we'll do a reasonable job there, but we will make sure the government's solvent, there's more money in your pocket, you know, your kids can get a job, that's your strength. And see, what's happened here is the lives have run off to the right, and so they're just bleeding votes. They've lost about half their vote to Hansen. You know,

Labor's had lost a bit based on the polls, but the bulk of that loss has come from the traditional centre-right parties, and I think they're digging their own grave. Now, Interestingly, I discussed this very phenomenon with Farage, your parliament recently, and Farage agreed with me. And he said, this is the mistake Badnox making. So you'd be better judges of that than me. It's interesting you said you thought Labour will win. Because what you've described there, take out compulsory voting where both Roy and I agree

with you and preferential voting as well, but take that out. I'm one of the few people around at the moment who still thinks actually Labor will probably win the next election here because a lot of the same things are applying. But I just wanted to ask you with all your political experience, what you think is happening in British politics right now, that Kirstalm has gone from leading Labour to a landslide two years ago to now, you know, possibly by the time this interview comes out, be facing a challenge to be spilled out of offices, you guys like to call it. Well, look, again, you've forgotten more about this than I'll ever know. So except this

with all humility. I find Starm are a very unusual guy. I mean, I don't know him, okay? But I find him singularly unpersuasive and lacking in political eloquence. And I had an interesting experience of that in the House of Commons. After the King's speech, as you know, there's an address in reply, it's moved by two government backbenches,

and then the opposition leader speaks. and then the PM. And I was in the public gallery watching this, which was interesting. Bad Knock gave a good speech. I mean, she tailed up the Prime Minister, which is what you do when the opposition leader is. You just, I've done that job, horrible job. And then Stama rose to his feet.

The house is packed. It's full of energy. There's a bit of excitement in the air. And reading from a prepared text, for several minutes. He speaks solemnly, gravely about the stabbing of the Jewish person at Golders Green and the evils of anti-Semitism.

Now, I don't think there was anyone in the house that disagreed with the word that he said, right? The sentiments were absolutely correct, but you could just feel the energy draining out of the chamber. You could just feel, you could feel it being flattened. And then, having got those remarks off his chest, he then tried to rev things up and counter-attack against the opposition, which of course he couldn't do because everyone was as flat as attack. And all I could think to myself was, this is a speech that's been written.

He's reading. You know, truthfully, the Prime Minister should not read a speech like that. It should be able to speak extemporate. But he's reading that. So somebody has thought that's a good idea. Now, you tell me, Alistair, you've written speeches for prime ministers, why on earth would that have been done? It seemed to me as though he was trying to do himself in. To me, I think Labor's biggest problem is, you know, a lack of, I don't know, sort of inspiring leadership. And it's, I mean, that's a tough thing to say. Do you think he's done? Is your sense of having been here and seen him?

I don't know what the numbers are. I have no idea. And as you know, politics is a relative business, right? I mean, people may not like him, but if they don't like the other people, if they dislike the other people more, he still get up. But I don't understand. I mean, you tell me, you tell me in Brorie, I'm sure you've talked about it before, but how could have someone get to be leader of the Labour Party

to be a Queen's Council and advocate, a barrister, and I've done all of those things. I haven't been a leader of the Labour Party, of course, but I'm a leader of a political party, and I've been a lawyer. How can you do those jobs and not be a better communicator? That's the thing I can't quite understand. Well, I think the answer is probably that he wasn't a politician for a long time. He probably thought for most of his life he's going to be a lawyer forever,

and then he came to politics quite late. And I think he probably sees himself as being an antidote to a politics he thought was being rejected, Boris Johnson, Trump, flamboyance, etc. But I agree with you, sometimes when I see him communicating, I have that sense. Fun enough, we're talking on the morning that Kirstama has announced a ban following the Australians in the ban on social media for under 16-year-olds. And he delivered it with, you know, real passion, but reading it. And if I could just imagine him saying the opposite with the same sort of passion,

that maybe leads people to think I'm not quite 100% sure what he really believes. Where I've always felt that, you know, I said Keating was one of my heroes. I never, ever, ever doubted when Paul Keating spoke what he thought. Oh, yeah. And like, you know, talking to you now, you're answering every question very, very directly. I know it's easier when you're out of office than in. But so I think it's that. It's a kind of lack of certainty about what the inner core is, probably.

Yeah, I had an interesting experience. in this sense with Bill Shorten, who I'm sure you've met. Yeah, I remember Bill Shorten, yeah. Bill was the Labour leader, and he, when I was PM, and Bill, you know, I must have given 100 speeches where Bill spoke after me, you know, set his engagements in the House or elsewhere. And very often he had a better speech than me,

and someone had written something for him. It was really good, and, you know, I pay attention to that, and I was thinking, I was thinking, I thought, that's a great speech. but he was never really able to deliver it with any conviction. And his critics, the intense, most intense ones, of course, were in his own party, would say he was a man of no conviction, but that wasn't true. It's just that somehow or other, he'd got himself into, and I've seen this with a few

politicians, where they're sort of trying so hard to be what they think somebody thinks a politician is, that they sound like a politician. and don't sound like themselves. So like this is Trump's super strength, for example. He is utterly authentic. I mean, wild, crazy, exaggerated, he may be, but it is very authentic. You know, nobody's written those lines for him, right?

I'm not suggesting Kirstama should try to channel Donald Trump, but I think if people feel you're not authentic, or if you, you know, maybe he's authentically, You know, bland, I don't know. But it's a real challenge or authenticity. And this is, you know, this is why Pauline Hansen. This is what people like about Paul Ian Hanson. They think she's very authentic, very real. Anthony Albanese has won this election. It seems a bit loveless. His net popularity is not great. And he's playing around with capital gains tax and stuff. And there seem to be two

views on the future of Australia. One of them, I guess, is the Labor view, which is Australia is doing just fine and it can afford to raise more taxes. And there would be another view, which is that maybe Australia can't sit on its laurels. And it did well after 2008 and its economy often looks quite impressive. But actually, there does need to be very fundamental reform, pro-business reform, tax reduction, some of the kind of center-right arguments that you used to make. Give us the sense of where Australian, in your view, needs to be in the next 5, 10, 15 years and how you would differ from Anthony Albanese. Well, I mean, I was all about innovation, lower taxes, encouraging investment.

I'm not the first politician to run on a platform of jobs and growth, but that's what it's all about, ultimately. And I think that, you know, you can have academic arguments for tax reform that makes sense somewhere in the Treasury, but you've actually got to ask yourself, what is it going to do to people who are making investments, taking risks, hiring people. You know, one of the problems with politics, this is really a big problem with the Labor Party. It's a problem with both parties, but big problem with Labor, is that there are very few people there with any business experience, much life's experience.

I mean, when I was a kid, when I was working as a political journalist in the New South Wales State Parliament, when Neville Rand was the leader of the Labor Party, most of the Labour members who were trade unionists had been worked they were bricklayers they were plumbers they were engine drivers you know boiler makers they were people who'd work now the they those that have worked for trade unions have worked university graduates who have had jobs you know as officials have never actually worked and I used to goad them in the house I used to say you know as far as you know the Labour members are concerned manual labour as a Mexican bandit. You know, they hadn't encountered it. And I think the, there is a, you get a lack of sort of real world understanding of,

understanding of how the real world operates in politics. And I think it's a, it's a problem. I couldn't say how big a problem it is in the UK, but it's certainly a problem in our system. So yes, we can always be more innovative. Look, we're a small economy. We've got to be innovative, competitive, all of those things. Innovation and science was a huge part of my economic agenda. And, you know, I think that was something that really worked. But look, we're doing pretty well on the clean energy transition, for example. You know, the climate change deniers notwithstanding. We've got the biggest penetration of rooftop solar in the world, massive rollout of storage. You know, we've obviously got the big snowy two project I started underway, but

thousands and thousands of batteries all around the country. We are making, for a country that has had been hitherto totally dependent on fossil fuels, we're making a very big, a successful transition to clean energy and demonstrating, and this is an important point, electricity prices have been coming down and they're coming down because solar and storage is cheaper. And so, you know, but when I was John Howard's environment minister 20 plus years ago, you know, I was having to argue that we needed to pay more to save the planet. Now we're in a happy position that the renewables are actually cheaper. And, you know, so we're doing well with that.

I'm not letting Rory come back on that because he's slightly moving to the dark side on climate and you and I have got to fight to we're going to fight to bring him back. Listen, I want to close Malcolm, but just, I've always really liked Australian politics. I've always liked the kind of toughness of it. But if I just go through, I was reading up on you last night, and if I go through your kind of career, you're there talking about Kirstama, and yes, we've had lots of prime minister since Brexit,

but you lot really are rough. So you become an MP 2004. You're serving John Howard's government. He loses an election to Kevin Rudd. He loses his seat. You narrowly lose the leadership to Brendan Nelson. But you're appointed shadow, equivalent of our shadow chancellor. A year later, you take him on and you oust him.

Okay. You then support Labour Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on something, and they all come back at you and they oust you. Okay? You then get persuaded to stay in politics. You then get into the cabinet when you win the election. Tony Abbott, he's the leader. You challenge him and you beat him.

And then you get challenged. And then you win that against Peter Dutton, but then you get challenged. again and you think, I'm not going to win this time, so I'm off. I mean, it's pretty brutal, and this is over a relatively short period of time. And I just wondered, you said these two great pluses, compulsory voting and preferential voting. Is your three-year term not just a complete and utter disaster for your governmental politics? Yeah, I think it's not a complete and utter disaster, but yeah, we definitely should have four-year terms. Unfortunately, the three-year terms are in the

constitution. Yeah, no. We'd have to get everybody, literally everybody would agree to it. Instructively, I think now all of the state and territory parliaments are four-year terms. So there's no doubt. I mean, I think most Australians would say three years is too short, five years is probably too long, four years is the right term. And my final final, a very quick question, is Rupert Mardock evil? Well, he's done a lot of evil things. I wouldn't say anybody's evil, but I think the, you know, I've known Rupert for 50 years. You know, you've got to ask yourself, I think, in your life, what have you actually done with the power that you've had? And, you know, Rupert's made himself rich and his family and all that stuff. But, I mean, America is, to English-speaking world,

are more divided and angry. He certainly made that angry. I don't think you would have had Brexit without Rupert. I don't think you would have had Trump without Rupert. And Rupert has been the loudest, most influential single voice to stand against action on global warming. So, you know, Brexit, Trump and climate denial, I don't think that's a great list of achievements. So, and all of them, very, very adverse. And if you want to, you know, they're bad consequences, yeah, for sure. Malcolm, thank you.

That was terrific. Yeah, great to see you both. Thank you. Thank you. brutal assessment of our beloved prime minister, I thought. Yeah, well, I'm glad to get, have someone say it. I mean, I didn't want to sort of get into a kicking Kirstama, but I'm afraid, as, you know, I've probably said you in the past, I've always felt that with Kirstama. I mean, I was astonished during the Brexit stuff, 2016, 17, sitting in Parliament when

he was Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit secretary, making speeches on Brexit, and everyone kept saying, oh, it's amazing, this kind of great forensic mind. And I found him really dull. You know, This could have been the great, I mean, that was the real test case for me. That could have been the great emotional, spiritual argument of our age, Brexit. And he reduced it into sort of plodding his way through these speeches. And I don't think he's ever improved. I'm still a bit surprised by this story. And I think it was sort of driven weirdly by his friends from, you know, Tom Baldwin and others from before he became crown prostitution. I've never seen him give a good speech. I've never seen him being forensic. I've never seen this sort of brilliant barrister's mind. I think it's all been a from the beginning. So you agree with Malcolm. I mean, it's interesting, it is always interesting when politicians go to other parliaments

because of course they've got their own experience. And obviously Malcolm Turnbull and every Australian politician knows about our parliament, has seen debates and what have you, but it's really interesting to get his take sort of now out of frontline policy, sort of sitting there in the chamber,

watching it and clearly watching it very, very closely and then going away with that. It was interesting though how I'm trying to remember a part from maybe a little bit with Albanesey now, he didn't say much positive about any of the other prime ministers. No, no. I mean, look, I mean, again, an Australian listening to this,

and it's a bit like Spaniards listening to our interview with the Spanish prime minister, depending on which political persuasion you're from, you'll be shouting at the screen and wanting us to have pulled him up on this, that, and the other. I guess his relationship to the Liberal Party, the Australian Conservative Party, is sort of dangerously close to my kind of relationship to the British, Tory party. They don't really see you as a Tory. Yeah, having gone quite a long way towards the centre, flirting with the Teals, and certainly Tony Abbott, who is playing the kind of Kemi-Badnock role. I mean, he's now back in again as the kind of president of their party.

We'll be trying to take them to the rights and arguing that, and this sort of, I don't think, I wonder how you resolve this argument, because what the pulses will say is, wait a second, we have, objectively, the Conservative Party in Britain has lost all these votes to reform, objectively, the Liberal Party in Australia has lost all these votes to one nation. And how are you going to get those votes back if you don't appeal to those people? And then on the other hand, you have people like me, of course, and Malcolm Turnbull saying, no, no, no, we've got to the votes are in the centre ground. We've got to get back to the centre ground.

And it may be that you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. Yeah, yeah. No, listen, it's a tough call on it. Of course, that is, but it's interesting that his conclusion, right or wrong, is his view that Labour are going to win the next election. I thought that was a very interesting observation. I obviously hope he's right. Because he has reached the point.

This is kind of, and again, I maybe prove wrong. I've felt for some time now that I think Najafrash is not going to be the next prime minister. He clearly thinks Pauline Hanson is never going to be the prime minister. Are we both indulging in wishful thinking, or are we actually responding to a sense that they've sort of hit a peak? And if only our assessment depends on the other parties absolutely getting their act together. But I thought he put quite a good pitch for Australia. He wasn't, the one person he wasn't sort of diving into to speak against was Albanese. He seems to think he's doing a reasonable job.

Yeah, that was interesting. I loved him working backwards on American dependency. I liked that distinction between capability and intent and saying, you just can't build a system on the assumption that no American president will ever emerge, who might weaponize the fact you're dependent on them for everything. Or private citizen like Elon Musk. You know, it's not just, it's not just governments now that we have to watch. But what we didn't get into, and maybe we just got to keep getting into, is the cost and the difficulty of weaning ourselves off the US.

It doesn't matter whether you're in Australia or Britain or Europe, is just so extreme that it's all very well us, you know, saying logically you've got to do it, but actually paying for it and doing it. And of course, doing it in an environment where America is determined to stop you doing it is the big challenge in the moment, isn't it? Do you think, Rory, that we've both been warmer in our assessment of him in the debrief because he brought his wife on after we were filming, and they both told us that they were tripped plus members? Do you think that's softened our possible, isn't it? Yeah, that was very, well, this is a wily politician, isn't he? Politician, it comes on, tells us about a few interviews that we've done that he liked.

And yeah. Yeah, that's it. Flatters us tells me that, you know, I could be next in line, you know, this sort of strange, traitorous Republican tradition. King Rory, yeah. I thought, though, because we do have a lot of listeners in Australia, and we get told sometimes we don't do enough about Australia. So I hope people enjoyed that.

And we've also got Kevin Rudd coming on sometime. I wonder whether it wouldn't be interesting for us to actually get Tony Abbotton, because they're, and we didn't talk about this. And of course, Malcolm would be horrified by my returning to kind of British snobbish sociology. But in a sense, there's something similar. They're both Sydney boys from these great big, big, dominant schools in Sydney. both wrote scholars and they were tussling each other in a kind of Cameron Johnson way for the leadership of their party for a long time. So it'd be interesting to get Tony Abbott.

I also, I'm going to say I'm slowly, but quite methodically, working my way through Kevin Rudd's book on Xi Jinping. And my God, it is a piece of scholarship. It's built around kind of really close textual analysis of these big grand statements that Xi Jinping. makes. He's agreed to come on at some point when he's next in the UK. I'd love to get Paul Keating, but, you know, I don't want to bother him too much. I sometimes get the impression that you sometimes think some of the real kind of intellectual grandees of Australian politics, you sometimes think might be a little bit pleased with themselves. But often when they come on, they're very, very charming. If I mention Malcolm Turnbull, Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott to Australians,

would they think they're quite pleased for themselves? but would they also acknowledge that they could be quite charming? I think they could do both, but I think they're, I thought there was very interesting that exchange about the school thing. I was going to mention the fact that if it's Glasgow, it's about religion, you know, what school did you go to? But there is, I've always liked this about Australia. They've got issues with racism.

They've got issues with, you know, it was tragic in a way that Albanese lost the voice vote. But I thought he was interesting on that. So the Aboriginal history has never fully been addressed. But there is something much more classless about, Australia and there is about the UK. And I like that. So I think there's a charm in them. I've always felt I'm half Australian and half Irish, but I've got no Australian blood, no Irish blood. It's really weird. And 100% Scottish. It's a very strange bit. But there we are. Very good. Well, now we'll finish. Love to talk to you. Bye-bye.