TRIGGERnometry - Tony Abbott: We Stopped Illegal Immigration!

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

Tony Abbott is an Australian former politician who served as the 28th prime minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015. Representing the Liberal Party of Australia, Abbott’s premiership was notable for the implementation of Operation Sovereign Borders, the objective of which was the cessation of illegal maritime arrivals. In September 2020, he was named an adviser to the British government's Board of Trade. Abbott continues to contribute to international public debate as a writer, public speaker and advocate for conservative causes. SPONSORED BY: AG1. Go to drinkAG1.com/triggernometry and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase. SPONSORED BY: EasyDNS - domain name registrar provider and web host. Use special code: TRIGGERED for 50% off when you visit https://easydns.com/triggered/ Become a Premium Member to receive exclusive benefits https://triggernometry.supercast.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We here in the West have got a very serious challenge, a challenge that we've only woken up to very recently. You're the former Prime Minister of a Western country in Asia. And the one thing I think people in the West are really not appreciating is the seriousness of the moment that we're in. China has engaged in the biggest peacetime rearmament in history over the last decade. people who come here illegally by boat, the gummed up system, I can't believe the contortions that stop the creation of an effective policy here. Hey guys, trigonometry needs your help. We took a big risk creating the show,

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Click the link on the podcast description, or find the link on your podcast listening app to join. us. Support us and help change the way we have conversations and make the world saner. Tony Abbott, it's a great pleasure to have you on the show. We want to talk to you about China, immigration and a bunch of other things. But the thing that we really felt is so important to raise with you. You're the former prime minister of a Western country in Asia. And the one thing I think people in the West are really not appreciating is the seriousness of the moment that we're in. When the president of Russia,

the leader of China, the leader of Iran, are all talking about the multipolar world. People don't seem to appreciate what's going on. And I know that you have some unique thoughts on that, that I really want you to share with people. Well, Constantine, I think you're right. We've had 70 years of unparalleled and unprecedented peace and prosperity. If you take the world in 2020 just before the pandemic, never before had people all around the globe been more free, more rich, more safe. And since then, we had a pandemic where, frankly, policy to deal with it did far more damage than the disease itself.

In the process, we saddled ourselves with mountainous debt. In the process, we sapped our work ethic and damaged our spirits. And then, of course, we had the Ukraine war, which was a horrific reminder that war between nation-states was not a thing of the past, that aggression by large countries against small ones was not a thing of the past. While the initial Western response to the horrific Russian invasion was pretty good, the truth is that we've given the Ukrainians enough military support. to avoid being defeated, but we haven't given them enough to allow them to drive every last Russian soldier from every last inch of Ukrainian territory, which frankly is the only fair outcome here.

And now we've got this horrific business in the Middle East, where Hamas have unleashed on the innocent people of Israel, an attack of the most appalling savagery. And right around the world, including in cities like London and my own hometown of Sydney, you've got large swathes of the population who seem to be on the side of the terrorists rather than the people who are trying to stamp out terrorism. We had the most appalling scenes in Sydney, just a night or two after the initial massacre, where hundreds and hundreds of demonstrators were crying out literally gas the Jews, F the Jews. Now, in Australia, as in Britain, we have a vast anti-racism apparatus,

and this vast anti-racism apparatus has not as yet raised a finger against those people who are preaching the most unspeakable race hate on our streets. So we here in the West have got a very serious challenge, a challenge that we've only woken up to very recently from dictators on the march. We've probably got an even bigger challenge, and that is to believe in ourselves, believe in our values, because so many people who should know better do not seem to appreciate that for all the faults of countries like Australia, countries like Britain, countries like the United States, these are the best societies that mankind has ever had. And until recently, these were the best times that mankind has ever had.

And our challenge is to try to ensure that we have not already lived through the best of times. And so much to pick up on there. And I wanted to talk about geopolitics and all the other stuff. But there was something you touched on, and I know to many people it seems like old news, but I will say this, to hear a former Prime Minister of a major Western country talk about our response to COVID in the way that you just did. It is so comforting, actually. I mean, what was happening, including in your country, was horrific.

Extraordinary, extraordinary. And it was particularly dispiriting that so much of this happened under governments of the centre-right because at the heart of the centre-right political philosophy is greater freedom and smaller government. And yet here we had the Boris Johnson government in Britain imposing absolutely unprecedented restrictions on freedom, creating absolutely massively intrusive systems of surveillance. It was more the states that did it in Australia than the Fed. itself, but the Fed certainly acquiesced in all of this. And one of the reasons why people on the political centre right, I think, have been so discombobulated and somewhat dispirited lately

is because the people who are supposed to be our leaders have acted so against those things that are supposed to be our instincts. And the other extraordinary thing is that no one seems interested in having a serious, hard-headed look at exactly how we overreacted so badly, exactly how the pandemic plans that had been carefully prepared over decades were junked in panic in the first week of March when the Italian hospital system appeared to be collapsing. And instead of the sensible, modulated, proportionate plans that had long been, prepared. Basically, everyone, except for Sweden and except for some states in the United States, everyone adopted a variant of the Wuhan plan, which was to lock everyone up, close everything

down, hope that you could somehow unenvent this virus, and it was always simply wrong. And at no point were the obvious things that we do in almost every other instance applied, that's to say cost-benefit analysis, which asks, well, what is the danger we are attempting to deal with? What are the costs of trying to deal with it? And how do we balance this out? At no point was any of that done. Instead, in an extraordinary moral and physical panic, governments did things which the, the doleful consequences of which we will be living with for years to come. you made a quite a profound point there, Tony, where you were talking about

we're not sensible or rational in our response to COVID. I don't think we're sensible or rational in our response to anything at the moment, if I'm being brutally honest. You can take any particular topic or issue and you look at the way it's been covered and the way people talk about it. A lot of the times it's fundamentally irrational, isn't it?

Look, there are any number of other issues that we can talk about. we could talk about the climate cult, we could talk about the gender fluidity push, we could talk about the magic pudding economics, we could talk most profoundly about the cultural self-loathing, which appears to afflict the best countries on Earth. Crazy things are happening everywhere.

In fact, one of the books that I would like to write and have tentatively begun, I've given the working title to peak, insanity because I think that is something that we are on the verge of in these. It's quite an optimistic title because you're assuming we're not going to keep going. Well, eventually, as Margaret Thatcher once observed, the facts are conservative, eventually the emissions obsession will run up against the need for us to have affordable, reliable power, eventually the cultural self-loathing will run up against a military challenge

from a dictatorship. And when those things happen, sanity will return. The sad thing is that things might have to get somewhat worse before they start to get very much better. So you're saying that we've still got a little bit of road in the whole insanity to go. One of the encouraging straws in the wind was the recent decision by the Sunak government to wind back some of Britain's crazy policies on electric cars and banning gas boilers, because plainly they were going to impose massive costs and disruptions on decent, ordinary, aspirational people for no environmental gain. I mean, even if you accept the anthropogenic global warming thesis, that somehow mankind's carbon dioxide emissions are a grave threat to the planet,

even if you accept that thesis, and I think it's highly contentious, but even if you accept that thesis, the idea that Britain could somehow save the world on its own and by inflicting massive cost punishments on its people was just, well, it was kind of. kind of political sadomasochism on a grand scale. It was economic and social self-harm on a grand scale. Now, there's still lots of other folly out there. I mean, genuinely achieving net zero within the next 30 years, within the next 25 years, almost, is going to devastate our

economies just at a time when our strategic challenges, particularly China, are doing no such thing. So they're spending tens and tens of billions of dollars, trillions of dollars on armaments, and we're spending billions and ultimately trillions of dollars to convert a perfectly reasonable coal, gas, oil and nuclear-based power system to something based on windmill, solar panels and batteries. Well, I mean, it's completely irrational, but it's driven by apocalyptic fears of climate extinction based on pseudoscience and a complete ignorance of history. Tony, we're sitting here in Westminster, right, in the heart of the capital, and the British political system, actually, if you were to go out there and say what you just said about, you know, the climate cult, you're very skeptical of the anthropogenic climate change thesis, all of that.

Most people haven't heard that. And to hear a former Prime Minister of Australia say that, I think would be quite shocking to them. Why do you say those? It's one of the reasons why I got turfed out because too many people inside my own party thought that I was too hard line on some of these issues. They thought that that was a sort of a robust conservatism that they doubted its electoral salability, if you like.

And yet the interesting thing about, Australia is that every election we've had where climate change has been an issue and where the conservative side of politics has said, look, we are not going to sacrifice people's economic well-being to reduce emissions. The conservative side has won. In 2010, climate change was an issue and we took a first-term government when I was the leader of the opposition to minority status. In 2013, when the Labor Government's carbon tax was one of the key issues, we had a thumping win.

In 2016 in Australia, Malcolm Turnbull, who was then Prime Minister, didn't campaign on climate because essentially he and the Labour Party agreed. We almost lost. In 2019, Scott Morrison as Prime Minister did campaign on climate, saying that Labor's then 45% emissions reaction target would be very economically damaging, cost us something like a half a trillion dollars. And then in 2022, after the Morrison government committed to net zero, as part of the whole Glasgow Gab Fest, we didn't campaign on climate

and we lost and lost badly, in part because the people who were. looking to us to defend their economic interests against these kind of first world obsessions, if you like, thought that we'd badly let them down and lost our spine. But Tony, I'm not a political expert, but it's not shocking to me that people don't want to be made poor for these ideas. But I was curious to hear why you're skeptical. Constantin, they need leadership. And one of the difficulties at the moment is that,

I mean, people say that the whole, if you like, a political spectrum has shifted to the left in recent years. I'm not so sure about that. And if it has, it's because the so-called right has not had very much courage and conviction. I mean, look at the conservative governments here in Britain over the last decade or so. Now, David Cameron, an outstanding individual, a person I admire and like. I think his difficulty was in part that he was in coalition with the Lib Dems. But on climate, it was a government that very much had drunk the Kool-Aid, so to speak. It was Theresa May who pushed through Parliament this declaration that we were facing a climate emergency,

Boris Johnson, a wonderfully capable man, a brilliant wizard of a politician at his best, who should forever be remembered as the man who, who, should forever be remembered as the man who, got Brexit done, nevertheless turned out to be an absolute climate zealot as Prime Minister, perhaps the worst of climate zealotry as Prime Minister, even though in the days when he was writing about these things, he was always a considerable sceptic. Now, thank God, Rishi Sunaik seems to be bringing some kind of moderation and proportionality to all of this. And yet plainly, there is a group of people inside the Conservative Party who are proving difficult on this,

maybe because they really have succumbed to this view that we're all doomed unless we radically and swiftly reduce emissions. Maybe they think that the public have succumbed to the view and their job is not to lead but to follow. Or maybe they just want to be difficult for who, whoever the Prime Minister at the time is, but nevertheless, while I think Rishi Sunak gave himself an enormous boost and started to create at least a glimmer of hope of victory at the next election with that recent move, there's a lot more that really should be done.

This is why I keep questioning you, because we still haven't got to the answer, which is if we are to persuade people, we have to give them a persuasive argument, because people who are told that the earth is about to burn, will be persuaded to support policies that Amelia read that. So what is the argument that, you know, you're making? Because some people might say, well, you've just listed a bunch of conservative prime ministers here who disagree very strongly with your view. So why are you skeptical about the climate narrative? Okay.

Well, I accept the physics that all other things being equal, an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide should warm the planet. I accept that. But climate is an incredibly complex mechanism, an incredibly complex mechanism. And the biggest impact on climate is the sun. If we have more sunspot activity, the world warms. if we have less sunspot activity, the world cools. The next biggest impact on climate is oscillations in the Earth's orbit.

If we get a little bit closer to the sun, it gets hotter. If we get a little bit further away from the sun, it gets cooler. Now we know the climate has changed dramatically over time. Back in the days of the dinosaurs, the world was much, much warmer, than it is today. Back in the days of the ice ages, the world was much cooler than it is today. Mankind's carbon dioxide

had nothing to do with any of those periods of intense climate change. So there are many, many, many other factors. I mean, you cannot deny that there are many, many other factors in climate apart from simply carbon dioxide. And even on carbon dioxide, Man's contribution to the annual production of carbon dioxide is relatively small.

The Roman warm period somewhat hotter than today. The medieval warm period somewhat hotter than today. The mini ice age in the 1600s when the Thames would freeze over, somewhat colder than today. So, but again, human carbon dioxide emissions had nothing to do with that. So there's absolutely no doubt that climate does change. Yes, increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, all things being equal, will tend to warm the planet. But this idea that going from roughly 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide 100 years ago to 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide today,

and depending upon what happens, perhaps 500 parts of carbon dioxide in 50 or 100 years time, it's very hard to believe that this is quite the catalyst for catastrophic change that the alarmists make out. And even if it is going to bring about serious change, such as two or three degrees of extra warming, such as two to five metres of sea level rise, these are things that we can adapt to over time. The important thing is to be as rich and as strong as we can be when facing these challenges,

not to impoverish ourselves to meet an enemy which may not be nearly as serious as we think. Now I know they talk about the, you know, the precautionary principle. And that's true. We should take reasonable precautions against plausible threats. That's why we have a military force and a nuclear deterrent, things like that. But honestly, would a couple of degrees of be the catastrophe that the alarmists make it out to be? I mean, ask yourself that question. If you could wear a T-shirt more often in London, would that be a disaster? If it was possible to swim a bit longer in Cornwall, would that be a disaster? Now, sure, it might be a problem for ski fields, but is this really the absolute catastrophe against you? It's a problem.

which so much of our economy and society has to be transformed that the alarmist make it out to be, I don't believe it is. Now, when I was Prime Minister, I took the view that climate does change, mankind does make a difference, we should take reasonable steps to reduce our emissions as far and as fast as possible,

but, and this was the critical proviso, not at the expense of jobs, of industries, and badly damaging ordinary people's cost of living. We'll get back to the episode in a minute, but first, we want to talk to you about AG1. If you're a long-time fan, you might know we've been drinking AG1 for over a year now to stay healthy and stave off illness in preparation for whenever our schedule gets really busy. When we use AG1 on our busy America tours, we've found that we feel a real difference to our energy levels and our ability to focus. So my concentration span has gone from two seconds to 12. That's because AG1 is a foundational nutrition supplement that supports your body's universal needs, like gut optimization, stress management and immune support.

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Try AG1 and get a free one-year support. of vitamin D3K2 and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drinkag1.com slash trigonometry. That's drinkag1.com slash trigonometry. That's drinkag1.com slash trigonometry. Check it out. And now back to the interview. And that is such an important point because the thing that I get frustrated with Tony is when we're talking about this and people going, you know,

we need to do X, Y and Z, and you go, we're in a cost of living crisis here, mate. People can barely afford to buy food. Well, you're now going to jack up their energy prices by three times or whatever it is. It's not sustainable. And this is where ordinary people are starting to think

that the risk, even in great and stable democracies like our own, the risk is that ordinary people, will lose faith in the system because they will see the people who they elect to do the right thing and the political parties who they thought they could trust to be sensible and reasonable,

pursuing these things that just look to be contrary to common sense. And when that happens, and we've already seen this in continental Europe, when that happens, you get fringe parties arise which often you can understand people looking for alternatives, but unfortunately the alternatives sometimes get a bit kooky and that's to be avoided as well. So look, these are difficult times and the countries which have been beacons of hope to the world

for so many centuries now need to look to themselves lest we let each other down and lest we fail to give the guidance to the rest of the globe that we have for so long. I would actually argue, Tony, that in some ways it's better that you get these kooky parties spring up because at least that shows a faith in democracy, rather than what is actually happening in our country where people go, the system's broken, it's not working, I'm stepping back from the system. No, but, but, you know, when I got turfed as Prime Minister,

I had literally thousands of letters and emails, many of which said start a new political party. And I always responded. I said, look, I can understand your feeling, but frankly, it's better to repair an existing party than it is to try to start a new one. And this is where I say to people, if you don't like the way things are going,

don't despair, don't opt out, don't rush off to start, you know, the true conservative party or, you know, the Make Britain Great Again party or something like that. Join the existing political party, which best suits your instincts, and make it better than it is. Because, you know, 100 people,

inside a political party can do far more than a thousand people outside a political party, you always affect change better from the inside than the outside. And whatever faults our major political parties have in countries like Britain, Australia and America, they are still open to the influence of their members. Maybe they're manipulated from the top by factions maybe there are various stitch-ups done from time to time to deny the membership a fair say, but you have still got far more influence as a member of a political party

than as someone just demonstrating on the street. Okay, so I put a counter-argument to you. We're sitting in Westminster. There is nobody who has changed Westminster more in the last 10 to 15 years than Nigel Farage. And I accept that. I accept that. Nigel Farage has been,

quite a seismic force. But for Nigel Farage, Brexit would never have happened. But, and this is where Britain has been lucky, the Conservatives have been lucky, and Nigel has shown considerable character. Back in 2019, had he run Brexit Party candidates in every seat, he probably would have stopped the Johnson government

from winning a majority. but instead quite cleverly having got at last a conservative leader who was fair income about getting Brexit done, he then ran candidates tactically, if you like, to ensure that he did not get in the way of a conservative victory. Now, now you say shouldn't democracy give us a new political party? Well, the trouble is democracy will often. give us complete chaos, depending upon how the system works, before it gives us a new equilibrium. And while I don't say that there can never be a case for a new political party, in this country, the Conservative Party has something like 300 years of history. It's invented and reinvented

itself many times over that period, but always at the heart of the conservative instinct is a respect for tradition, awareness about change where there are not clear and obvious benefits and an intense patriotism because, as I say, at the heart of all decent centre-right political movements, there's freedom, there's tradition, and there's patriotism. Love of Country is very much at the heart of all respectable conservative political parties, and certainly it's always been at the heart of the British Conservative Party. And I guess the classic exemplars have been Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Tony, I would add another item to that list, which is prudence and financial responsibility.

And this is one thing that, I mean, Australia is actually a country that has historically been much more prudent, sensible running surpluses, hasn't had recessions at times other Western countries have. But I want to get your perspective on this because it seems to me that Britain and America in particular, have abandoned any pretense of fiscal responsibility. We print so much money now. And the concern that I have, and I'm very curious to hear your thoughts as a former prime minister, is that I don't understand how that ever gets dealt with because we have this narrative now whenever we try to reduce spending that you're killing people. The moment you try to cut any spending. And so I just don't see how that ever gets addressed. How? How?

are we going to get out of this? Our debt is bigger than our GDP. The most successful Australian government in recent times was the Howard government. And there were a couple of key factors in its success. The most obvious key factor in its success was that John Howard was essentially unchallenged as a leader throughout his 11 years at the top. And he had around him a nucleus of very capable people of strong and good character. Peter Costello, who might have challenged John Howard and turned the Howard government into a much shorter term government than it was,

while he at times got frustrated with John's longevity. In the end, he accepted that he had a duty to be a team player as opposed to one of those me, me, me politicians. So that was one factor. The other factor, which is insufficiently credited, is that back in 1991, under the leadership of John Hewson, the Liberal National Coalition went through a very extensive,

effectively a first principles review of policy. And we ultimately produced something called Fightback, which amongst other things recommended the introduction of a goods and services tax. But it was so much more than just that. It was really a reconsideration of government from the ground up. What was government doing, wrong, that had to be made right, what was government doing that it shouldn't do at all, and what wasn't being done by government, which should be done by government.

And that fight back package effectively provided a blueprint that guided the thinking of the Howard government throughout its nearly 12 years in office. Now, John Husson was an insufficiently skilled political salesman up against in Paul Keating, a political hunter-killer of great skill at the 1993 election to win. But nevertheless, that fight-back policy document was an incredibly important piece of work, which was very much responsible for the Howard government's ultimate success. Now, what we need now in Australia, in Britain, and in the United States, Basically, each of our countries needs serious, credible people to sit down and work out a new plan. And it can't just be the economic rationalism of the Reagan-Thatcher era, important though it is.

There's got to be a focus on society as well as just on the economy. But we've got to think of how do we make our economies more dynamic, more productive, how do we beat Russia and China in the technology race that's important to keeping ourselves safe while at the same time preserving the social fabric. So there's an economic challenge, there's a social challenge. Now, at the moment, we are spending gargantuan amounts of money industrialising effectively aged care, disability care and childcare.

I'm not saying this is easy, but we need to find ways of spending less on commercialising and corporatising these things, which in a better world would be done by the family, because that too is part of building a better society and respecting the social fabric. And then we need to have a long, hard think about our defences. Now, the military forces, even of the United States, have been massively wound down over the last 30 years. And as we are now seeing, while we have been winding things down, our strategic competitors have been massively winding things up. China has engaged in the biggest peacetime rearmament in history over the last decade. And that's why we don't just have this dreadful problem in Eastern Europe. We don't just have a potential

apocalypse in the Middle East, but we've also got the peril of a conflict in East Asia, which would have ramifications far, far exceeding. It would be many orders of magnitude, more disruptive than the Ukraine conflict. We'll come to China in fact, France. Let me just finish on the economy, and then you do China. You say we need to spend less on what we call social care and all of this other stuff, right. And if it was done by the family, that would be... We need to spend smarter. Yeah, I understand. And over time, if we spend smarter, we should spend less. And it should be done by the family,

which brings me to the problem that we have and which I think is driving a lot of the wokeness that we all complain about, which is how do you have families looking after elderly people or their own children when the cost of housing is so high that both parents have to work? just to make ends me. And here in London, even two very successful professional people struggle to get on the housing ladder or even afford rent. So there is a trap, and I'm curious how you would resolve that. Well, it's a complex problem. There's no doubt about that. And while there are lots of things that you can do that will help, there's no magic wand here. what are the things that are feeding into the housing crisis?

Partly, it's the cost of construction, which is often being driven by at times unreasonable environmental and planning rules. Partly, it's the quantitative easing of the last decade which has resulted in massive asset price inflation, and partly it's immigration. Now, in Australia, there was net overseas migration averaging about 100,000 a year in the Howard era.

Since then, it's averaged close to 300,000 a year. And just at the moment, we're expecting about 800,000 long-term arrivals over the current two-year period. And that's putting downward pressure on wages, upward pressure on housing, massive pressure on infrastructure, of all types, whether it's public transport, roads, schools, hospitals, etc. And yet one of the difficulties that we've got is that, it's pervasive amongst the commanding heights of contemporary Anglo-Sphere societies,

that immigration is an unalloyed economic good, and that immigration is actually a moral obligation upon us. We have no right to say to people who turn up in a rubber ducky on the beaches near Dover or the people who come in a fishing boat from Java to Australia, we have no right to say no to you. I mean, I cannot believe the moral contortions which stop Britain from getting itself from out of this European legal entanglement which prevents Britain doing what we did

in Australia with Nauru and PNG sending people to Rwanda. I cannot believe the gumbed-up system, which means that people who come here illegally by boat and who plainly are not fair-income refugees, I mean, they've gone through many safe countries before they get on a boat in France to come to Britain, so they're not fair-d-income refugees at all. I mean, sure, they might ultimately have come

from nasty, horrible countries, but if they were Ferdingham refugees, they would seek sanctuary in the first safe country to which they'd come, and that might have been Turkey, it might have been Italy, it certainly isn't Britain. I can't believe the contortions that stop the creation of an effective policy here. But again, it's the moral uncertainty, it's the cultural self-doubt, which has afflicted, the Western leadership to a greater or lesser extent for some decades now. Certainly since the Reagan-Thatcher Pope John Paul era, there's been a grave weakening of the moral clarity with which the leaders of the Western world have operated. But Tony, this goes back to what you said. So you

said, you know, that you got pushed out, ostensibly because you were pretty hard line about a certain issues. Well, it was one of the factors. I also had someone who didn't stay in the Parliament to be someone else's minister. And fair enough, you're entitled to be ambitious. And I suppose if you see an opportunity to seize the numbers and make yourself the PM, go for it. The problem was that a government that was elected to be a government of the centre right, to be, if you like, a government very much in the mould of John Howard. And turned out not to be that after I left office. And I think that was not only bad for the Liberal National Coalition in Australia,

but I don't think it was great for the quality of government either. But that's the problem. Let's look at it in a broader sense, Tony. That's pretty much what is happening when people see every government in the Western world. This is a government that purports to be one thing, it turns out to be another. The Conservatives aren't conservatives. Labor aren't particularly left-wing. The Liberal Democrats...

You wait till they get in government. Then they will be very, very left-wing indeed. I mean... A better way of saying it would have been Labor aren't pro-Labor, the pro-all is this one she was... Exactly right. They're no longer a working-class party. Yes.

But that to me is what he means. Yeah. That's what he meant. But that's what I mean by left-wing. They're not traditional left-wing. Okay, you've got the Liberal Democrats who, after Brexit, or during Brexit, it proved themselves to be neither liberal nor democratic.

So this is really what we're talking about here, which is a crisis. But again, again, in a democracy, ultimately the people get the government they deserve. So if you think that the political parties that you normally vote for are failing you, you can complain and bitch and bellyache, you can opt out, or you can get involved and make a difference. And my hope is that more people will get involved and make a difference because in the end, the quality of our democracy does not just depend upon our leaders. It depends upon each one of us. Do you have a website or do you plan to have a website?

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Do you know about that? Move your domains and websites over to EasyDNS right now. All you've got to do is go to EasyDNS.com forward slash tricks. That's easyDNS.com forward slash triggered. Use our promo code, which is also triggered, and get 50% off the initial purchase. Sign up for their newsletter, Access of Easy, which tells you everything you need to know about technology, privacy and censorship. And this is very much with the reason why we started this show, because we saw that something was awry and we wanted to talk about it and we could see that nobody or very few people in the mainstream media were actually being honest about it. But let's actually look at China, because that is something that worries me.

I don't think it's something we discuss about enough. And people see the issue of Taiwan and, you know, put their fingers in their ears and go pretty much la, la, la. But if you look at what's happened in Ukraine, if you look about the horrendous attack on Israel, it seems logical that Taiwan is next. Well, there's no doubt in my mind that the commissars in Beijing have been closely watching all of this and they will be carefully weighing their chances of getting away with an assault on Taiwan because just as Putin sees himself as having, if you like, a mission from God to recreate greater Russia, Xi Jinping and his colleagues see themselves as having a mission from whatever God they worship to end the century of humiliation and to make China once more the world's middle kingdom,

the globally dominant power. Now, the first step was to modernize their economy. They have substantially done that. The next step was to crush Hong Kong. They've substantially done that. Now the step is to seize Taiwan, even though Taiwan is a practically independent liberal democracy of 25 million people,

which after considering what China has done to the commitments it made in respect of Hong Kong, is never going to agree, is never going to agree, to submit to rule from Beijing. And the only thing that will stop Beijing from at some point in time attempting to seize Taiwan by force is the knowledge that it won't just be 1.4 billion Chinese

against 25 million Taiwanese. It will effectively be China against an array of powerful democracies. This is why whatever quibbles we might have with Joe Biden, four times now he said that if China did attack Taiwan, America would defend Taiwan. The policy of strategic ambiguity has not been formally abandoned, but I think it has been certainly amended by Biden. But it's one thing to say that America will

defend Taiwan. It's another thing for America to be readily able to do so, particularly if a lot of their ordnance stocks have been sent to Ukraine, and particularly if a lot of their military assets are in the eastern Mediterranean to try to ensure that Iran doesn't start playing horrific games with Israel. And this is where, I'm afraid, we have... We have... We have all... all reveled in the peace dividend over the last 30 years, forgetting that human nature hasn't changed, that geopolitics hasn't gone away, and that in the end, if you want to be free, you've got to be prepared to defend your freedom. And if you want the world to be just, you've got to be prepared to stand up against injustice.

Now, hopefully, hopefully, armed conflict can be avoided because as we are seeing in Ukraine and as we've now seen in Israel and in Gaza, the cost is horrific. And yet the one thing that invites armed conflict is weakness. Absolutely. And there's been too much weakness for too long.

Absolutely. We've been signaling weakness. Sorry, Francis. Go for it. Yeah. And so what would you do, Tony? Because you're the only one in this room who is led a nation. What would you do if you're in charge of the United States? Well, I would stop weakening my economy with all these unnecessary green regulations. I would accept that at least for the foreseeable future. in the absence of going to nuclear power or the as yet entirely unfeasible green hydrogen dream, we are going to have to continue to make use of coal and gas.

So I would stop imposing a whole lot of unnecessary hobbles on my economy. I would stop dividing and disconcerting my society through woke education, through all sorts of concessions to the gender fluidity, ideology and so on. And I would build up my defences. I mean, the American military is smaller than it should be. The stocks of munitions are lower than they should be. their capacity to build chips and planes is less than it should be. And this is all equally true in Britain.

And it is incredibly regrettable that for too long, all of us have been sleepwalking through Lotus Land. I mean, I can remember saying to one of my distinguished British conservative counterparts some years ago on this question of Britain spending 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid at the same time when it was cutting the military. I remember saying to, as I said, a distinguished counterpart the Conservative government, surely the best form of foreign aid is the British Army. I mean, why the hell are you cutting defence and at the same time boosting foreign aid, much of which will be wasted, much of which will end up in the pockets of corrupt governments in Africa

in particular, when you know that if the world is in trouble having a military force that can be deployed to restore order and where needs be, instill a bit of respect in dictators and other malefactors, that's what you really want. Tony, do you think we've fundamentally lost what you've just said? I've not heard a politician say this. You know, when you said, you know, let's make dictators aware that we're not messing around here. I don't hear politicians talk like that anymore. And I think we invite all of these challenges to us in this way.

And Constantine, how has Israel survived for so long in a hostile part of the world? I mean, how have less than 10 million Israelis not just survived but flourished and created a highly prosperous, free and fair society despite all of the threats, the existential threats that they've faced in the midst of the turmoil of the Middle East? They've done so because there've never been any doubt about the national project, which is to create an absolutely secure and inviolable homeland for the Jewish people, where others who are prepared to accept the law can also have a very good life and a free life. But at the heart of Israel's success and survival has been this notion that if someone does something bad to us,

we don't just take it on the chin, we give it back to them. You punch me, I punch you back. You punch me again, I punch you back much harder. You punch me three times and frankly, I knock you out. I mean, this has been their approach. And I mean, this is where there is a fundamental difference between the necessities of government. and, if you like, the desiderator of moral theology. One of the reasons why moral theologians don't normally make a good statesman is because the good Lord commands us to love, but the reality of government is that we have got to be just, and justice and charity are not the same thing. If private citizens want to exercise charity, that's a wonderful thing. and God bless them for that.

But the obligation on government is to be just. And the ultimate just government is a government which quite properly and fiercely protects its citizens against all their enemies. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a US-based restoration agent

who will stick by your side from start to finish. phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance claims, your agent handles it all. In fact, we're so confident restoration is guaranteed, pour your money back. Isn't it nice to have someone like that on your side? Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com slash Spotify. Terms apply. Tony, I'm going to ask you a question, which, again, it's on the China thing. It may seem to be quite unfair, but I really think, because I'm actually really worried about this. Do you think that this is almost inevitable that they're going to invite?

Because if you look at the way things are going, if you look, it seems to me, it's a next logical step, isn't it? No, it's not inevitable. For instance, the rulers of Beijing, they're not a death cult. They're not like Hamas. They are cruel. and they are focused, but they're not crazy. And they will do a calculus.

And if they think that the cost of aggression across the straits is too high, then in the end it will bring them undone, they won't do it. If they think they can readily win, well, then at some point they will. And that's why the important thing is to make crystal clear to the commissars in Beijing that any assault across the straits will have incalculable consequences. And you say they're not a death cult, which is obviously very reassuring. But I think the problem is, and it's something we talk about on this show a lot, is that when we talk about other cultures, we think,

think they're like us. They see the world the same way. Correct. When different cultures have different ways of living, they have different values. Yes, correct, correct. And again, you look at Hamas and you look at Islamic State that was, they are essentially a death cult. They think that if they can kill in the name of their version of Islam, That's the highest purpose in life. Putin's not quite like that, and nor other commissars in Beijing. What they're looking at is national aggrandisman effectively. So they're cruel, they're brutal.

Sometimes they do evil things, as Putin is now doing in Ukraine. But they're not irrational. It's just that their rationality is very different from ours. A British government thinks, how can I get re-elected by making the lives of the British people better? How can I run better hospitals? How can I build more roads? How can I increase prosperity?

That's what a British government is mostly thinking about. But Putin is mostly thinking about how do I restore the Russia of Peter the Great? And Xi Jinping is mostly thinking about how do I make China as soon as possible, the world's number one power. Now, their way of thinking is different from ours, and we need to understand that, and we need to tailor our responses to them in the light of what they are like, rather than assuming that they're just like us.

And this has been the problem. Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the so-called end of history and the so-called forever triumph of liberal market capitalism, we have assumed that there is this convergence. We were, if I may say, may say so fooling ourselves. And look, to some extent, I was part of that self-delusion. I mean, I did a free trade deal with China back in 2014 because back then it was still possible to believe

that China's economic liberalisation was being accompanied by a degree of political liberalisation, and over time that would produce a markedly different and much less aggressive China. So look, we were all gulled a bit. We all wanted to believe the best, not the worst. We've had one hell of a wake-up call, and though the hour is late, we need to be stronger, better, and more realistic in the coming years than we've been in the recent past. Tonya, it's been a pleasure. We've got a few minutes which we'll spend with our supporters on locals with you answering their questions. Before we head over there, what is the one thing that we're

not talking about that you think we really should be? Well, the one thing that I'd probably like to say to a British audience in particular is believe in yourselves, believe in yourselves. I've always been an incorrigible anglophile because no country on earth has had more impact on the modern world than this one when you think of the world's common language, the mother of parliaments,

the industrial revolution, the emancipation of minorities, all of that began here and spread from here to just about the whole of the globe. Even our adversaries have been very much influenced and shaped by the ideas and the innovations that have come from this country. And yet for the last, almost the last century, at the pinnacle of the British establishment, there's been this declineism and defeatism. get it out of your heads.

Please believe in yourselves because if we want the modern world to flourish, it's important that Britain be as strong and as self-confident as possible. Amen. All right, guys, head on over to locals where we're going to put your questions to Tony Abbott. We fix this problem.

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