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BONUS: Comfortable and relaxed, with John Howard
2 Playsin 18 minutes
Before he became Australia’s second-longest serving Prime Minister, then Opposition Leader John Howard famously stated that his ambition was for a country in which people should feel comfortable and relaxed about the past, present and future.
Many would argue he achieved that ambition, but Australia feels like a less comfortable and relaxed place in 2025. In this very special episode, Will chats to John about the state of modern Australia, and the upcoming federal election.
Follow Will Kingston and Fire at Will on social media here.
Read The Spectator Australia here.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Australia's Direction
00:00:21
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Fire at Will from The Spectator Australia, a safe space for dangerous conversations. I'm Will Kingston. Before he became Australia's second longest serving Prime Minister, then Opposition Leader John Howard famously stated that his ambition for the country was for people to feel comfortable and relaxed about the past, the present and the future.
00:00:46
Speaker
I think it's a wonderful vision statement for a politician because it's realistic and it's in keeping with the psyche of the nation. And I think he achieved that vision. Since he left office in 2007, Australia has become a different place.
00:01:00
Speaker
And I would argue that the country is no longer relaxed and comfortable as a collective group. The wounds of the past were ripped open by the voice referendum. It's arguably never been harder to buy a house, or it's been never been more expensive to live in the major cities, and it's arguably never been more culturally fractured.
00:01:19
Speaker
And of course, the future is uncertain geopolitically, economically, and culturally.
John Howard's Perspective on Australia
00:01:25
Speaker
To discuss the state of Australia in 2025 and the forthcoming election, it is a great privilege to be joined by the man who said those words over 30 years ago, former Prime Minister John Howard. Mr. Howard, welcome to Fire at Will.
00:01:40
Speaker
Well, very nice to be on your program. Good to talk to you. Fire away. Thank you. I will. And we will get to the nitty-gritty of that that forthcoming election. But I want to start by zooming out and looking at how you see the country today.
00:01:56
Speaker
you think Australia is no longer relaxed and comfortable with who it is? Fundamentally, and not as it should be. But we do have the capacity to bring back that state.
00:02:10
Speaker
What I meant with those remarks was that Australia has been a very successful country. We've always had a great sense of balance.
00:02:24
Speaker
One of the best things that ever happened to Australia was to have been colonised by the British. And I've said that on many occasions. And the British weren't perfect colonizers.
00:02:39
Speaker
No European or other power was. But, gee, they were infinitely better colonizers than the other alternatives. And we were fortunate that they um shone through.
00:02:51
Speaker
And one of the really clever things Australia did was we copied the good things from the British, such as the rule of war, the free press, parliamentary democracy, to some degree a sense of humour, not totally, but we rejected the bad things, ones that, bad in the sense they wouldn't work in Australia.
00:03:16
Speaker
Any idea of class distinction? No. Any idea of an aristocracy? No. So we achieved that wonderful midpoint, that sense of balancing.
00:03:29
Speaker
And I often look at the welfare system of Australia now and compare it, say, with the welfare system of Europe, including but not completely Britain, and the welfare system of America.
00:03:44
Speaker
The problem with the American system is it's too harsh. If you really miss out through no fault of your own, you can be sort of trodden over. And I think it is an issue with a lot of crime in some parts of America.
00:03:59
Speaker
By contrast, in Europe, it's too paternalistic. You're running a small business and you've got a couple of malcontents in your very limited number of the employees.
00:04:11
Speaker
Very hard to get them out. ah Very hard to get rid of them. I think we're sort of in the middle. We're not ideal, but we are we do have a capacity to sit in the middle. And I looked at the relative death rate.
00:04:27
Speaker
and the like in relation to COVID. And you find that Australia occupied a better position than either the United States or the United Kingdom. Now, I don't pretend remote, we're perfect.
00:04:42
Speaker
I think one of the clever things that we have done in the whole of our history is that we have avoided the extremes. We
Current Political and Economic Challenges
00:04:53
Speaker
have a comfortable middle point on so many things. I think part of it goes back to when we looked at our British inheritance and most of it was very good.
00:05:04
Speaker
Some of it was not fit for purpose. We made it very clear to ourselves and to the rest of the world, we weren't going to embrace it. That's the positive spin, and I agree with everything you've said. at the same time, you would also acknowledge that it does feel like, and you're very good at tapping into the mood of the nation, it does feel like there is a feeling of frustration, there is a feeling of resentment, there is a feeling of anger.
00:05:28
Speaker
What do you put that feeling down to at the moment? but Well, I think there is. I'm not pretending for a moment, but I think we are disappointed because the there is an issue with the cost of living in this country, as there is in Britain as there is in so many other societies.
00:05:47
Speaker
Some of that is anger that this should not have been allowed to happen. This is not Australia. We don't like the idea of some people missing out through no fault of their own.
00:05:59
Speaker
A lot of it has to do with the quality of the government we've had over the last three years. You'd expect me to say, and I will say, it's been very poor, and I'll go into that in more detail, but There is a sense that somehow or other we've been asleep at the wheel and we've allowed developments to occur that should never have been allowed.
00:06:24
Speaker
I think that term, asleep at the wheel, perfectly encapsulates not just the last three years. If I was to look at this in a non-partisan way, I think we have been asleep at the wheel since you left office in 2007.
00:06:36
Speaker
The last great structural reforms to the Australian economy took place under your leadership. I don't think there's been much economic reform since, at least in a really substantive way. And because we've always been in that lucky country, I think we are always at risk of that sense of complacency.
00:06:50
Speaker
think that in part is down to a lack of political courage. I don't disagree with that. I often said when I was in government that so running a country was like competing in a never-ending foot race.
00:07:08
Speaker
You kept running towards the finishing line and it kept receding, but you kept running even though you never reached it because you knew that if you stopped running, your competitors would keep running and go past it.
00:07:25
Speaker
I think we understood that even though we weren't conscious that we understood it. We understood it in practice, but we've really lost that understanding and we we haven't had on a lot of economic reform.
00:07:41
Speaker
I think we do have to find that appetite and this applies to people ah from all political streams. You you never give up. trying to make your country run more efficiently.
00:07:55
Speaker
You never give up the urge to have higher levels of productivity because if you do, others go past you. It will be easy for us to look at the failures of the Labor government, but let's look at the at the reasons for why the right and the Liberal Party australia in Australian politics haven't embraced reform in the way that that you did. There hasn't been that same political courage.
00:08:19
Speaker
You're a big fan of the broad church metaphor for the Liberal Party in terms of embracing social conservatism and classical liberalism. My view is, but particularly on the classical liberalism side, the Liberal Party is no longer liberal.
00:08:31
Speaker
As an aside, I don't think the Labor Party is no longer embracing Labor or the working class either. There's this weird dynamic at the moment. Do you think there is still the same appetite for classical liberalism and liberal economics, particularly as in the Liberal Party today?
00:08:45
Speaker
Or is this a fundamentally different party? No, I don't think it's a completely different party. I think that's a misstatement, misunderstanding of the move. I think there's still very much an inherent belief that we need as a nation to maintain the faith when it comes to economic reform.
00:09:08
Speaker
Now, it's harder when there are no longer so many low-hanging fruit. There were years ago. We emerged from a period in the um early 80s when we had a fixed exchange rate.
00:09:26
Speaker
We had a rigidly controlled centralized wage fixing. We had very high tariffs. And um we, of course, had high levels of government spending.
00:09:37
Speaker
Now, many of those things were eliminated during the time that we were in government, and to their credit, some of those reforms were also embraced by the Labour Party. Now, they've all been done, and many people said, oh, that was easy. then The truth is that big reforms are best done from government, really big reforms.
00:10:00
Speaker
But, of course, you've got to lay them out before you become the government. mean, we achieved the remarkable in the sense of way back in 1998, we were elected promising to introduce a broad-based indirect tax, 10%.
00:10:18
Speaker
ten percent We just won that election. We lost a lot of seats, but we had a big majority, and we went on from that. And that was a big achievement.
00:10:30
Speaker
And whereas three years earlier, Another liberal leader, the then opposition leader, had tried essentially the same, not three years earlier, it was actually 93, five years earlier, had tried essentially the same thing from opposition and had been defeated.
00:10:50
Speaker
in what was called an unlosable election. Well, of course, anybody who knows anything about politics knows there's no such thing as an unwinnable or an unlosable election. So obviously you have a big advantage if you do it from government.
00:11:06
Speaker
But you have to keep the light on the hill, I suppose I can best describe it, of further productivity and economic reform because if you don't, you'll just fall behind.
00:11:20
Speaker
I think you're a bit modest there because the GST came to mind when when you said that it was perhaps easier, and I understand the low-hanging fruit of economic reform in the 80s. The GST was something which was initially very unpopular and you had to take people on a journey to help them understand the benefits of tax reform.
00:11:35
Speaker
In a similar way, you had to take them on a journey to understand the benefits of gun reform, particularly on your own side after Port Arthur. To be fair, gun reform was was triggered by a particular event.
00:11:46
Speaker
And I think it was a huge... and justifiable and lasting reform. And it was difficult for some of my side of politics to embrace, but they did. And I always give a lot of credit to my rural colleagues in the National Party, like Tim Fisher and John Anderson and Mark Bale, who, despite the local difficulties, or Harold Macmillan would have famously said, those little local difficulties,
00:12:17
Speaker
So a big local did big little piece. But my point would be that I don't see either from Albanese or from Peter Dutton, the same appetite to be able to to take a stand on conviction. You've often been called a conviction politician.
00:12:33
Speaker
I'm not seeing the same area of courage and conviction that perhaps we've seen from the Howards and the Hawks and the Menzies of times gone by.
Global Political Trends and Australia's Path
00:12:42
Speaker
but is this because it is harder to show courage and conviction in 2025? Or do you think that we have a ah lesser quality politician today?
00:12:50
Speaker
Well, I wouldn't say we have a lesser quality. I don't get into the business ah comparing the equality of politicians from one era to the next. That is for other people. But I think the circumstances always alter.
00:13:07
Speaker
And you've got to remember that in the 1980s, there was a bit of a worldwide movement towards neoclassical economically liberal politics.
00:13:20
Speaker
Economic approaches, I mean, I remember that period saw the effective collapse of the, well, 10 years earlier, you'd seen in the early 70s, you'd seen the beginnings of the collapse of the Bretton Woods Agreement, which had regulated international flows.
00:13:41
Speaker
You saw they then the quadrupling of world oil prices. they' be There was a lot of movement at the stations. to use an Australian expression, in the world economy at that particular time. And i think it did have an impact.
00:13:56
Speaker
Look, there's always a case to be made for the politicians of the current era to be bolder and more open. Bear in mind that this election...
00:14:08
Speaker
throws up the prospect that for the first time since 1931, which was the beginning of the Great Depression, and almost 100 years ago, prospect that you might have first-term government thrown out.
00:14:27
Speaker
It doesn't happen very often, and and um I hope it does, but it's going to be a very tough hour. interesting that you mentioned the winds of change in, say, the 80s and how i recall your great line, the times will will suit me.
00:14:41
Speaker
In that period, on the right, it was classical economic liberalism. You would probably say today on the right, the mood is more around a different form of right-wing politics, this more populist approach, which is embodied by Trump.
00:14:55
Speaker
by Nigel Farage, the enduring popularity of Pauline Hanson in Australia now over a long period of time. How do you feel, as someone who has spent his life defending a classical version of conservatism, which is now, I would argue, under attack around the world, how do you reflect on the changing dynamics on the right?
00:15:13
Speaker
Well, I am not attracted to right-wing populism, very much opposed to I'm in favour of policies embraced by some centre-right parties, such as the right of any country to control not only how many migrants it takes every year, but also the composition of the migrant intake.
00:15:39
Speaker
The rejection of, for want of a better expression, trendy, wokest visions of social policy, I mean.
00:15:51
Speaker
The idea that there's more than two genders is absurd. And I think if there's been a failure on the right-hand side of politics in recent years, it's been its inability to denounce these trends in clear, unmistakable language and ah really pussing to it around and pretend that you can appeal to the common sense majority but the same time not offend anybody in the middle.
00:16:20
Speaker
The problem with that approach is you end up getting burnt because people don't know what you stand for. I'm often asked to give talks about what experiences I grew as a leader.
00:16:32
Speaker
And one of the most important messages I deliver in these speeches is that first and foremost, you've not only got to have a set of values and attitudes, but you've got to have a capacity to explain to them.
00:16:47
Speaker
And you've also got to accept... The most important thing in political leadership is to get the big things right. but mean, I often quote the person I admire most in Western politics of the last hundred years, not surprisingly, Winston Churchill.
00:17:05
Speaker
And I think of mistakes he made, the things he got wrong, but gee I think of the things he got right. The things he got right were not only more important, but they were more enduringly significant.
00:17:18
Speaker
the things he got wrong. What are the big things to get right in Australia in 2025 that both leaders should be considering? ah Well, I think one of the big things you've got to get right in Australia is our composition of our migrant intake.
00:17:35
Speaker
We have been for a nation that has benefited enormously from migration and I believe in migration and we have a very high number of people who weren't born in this country.
00:17:47
Speaker
But We have a right both to decide how many migrants we take and the circumstances in which they take them. I remember in the 2001 election campaign, I said in the middle of my opening speech at the launch, I said, we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.
00:18:13
Speaker
Now, that enjoyed enormous support. It's what people felt. Not only did people who for decades had had Anglo-Celtic forebears living in Australia, but also people who came recently from Europe and from China and from India.
00:18:33
Speaker
In the last several years, the three largest, I can't remember the order each year, but the three largest sources of migration to Australia had been India, China, Britain slash Ireland.
00:18:48
Speaker
Now, probably bounced around between the three of them, but that's just an illustration that we continue to draw lots of migrants from what you might say the traditional sources, the United Kingdom and Ireland, but we also, i mean, there are 700,000 people of Chinese descent in Sydney, our largest city.
00:19:13
Speaker
It'd be fair to say that the most widely spoken foreign language in Australia is chinese So we've we've we've done that well, but you've always got to keep an eye on the composition and you've got to be willing to say, we're going to adjust here. and There's no doubt that if you have too much migration, it will put a strain on housing availability.
00:19:37
Speaker
And that in turn is one of the biggest complaints, people. It's it's the availability of affordable housing either to buy or to rent that's the big issue. And it's the availability, it's a supply issue, not a demand issue.
00:19:54
Speaker
We'll get to that in more detail. But the interesting thing about that mix is I don't think common sense everyday Australians, certainly they don't have a problem with immigration from like-minded countries like the UK.
00:20:06
Speaker
The game has has changed a bit when you think about the elephant in the room, which is migration from fundamentalist Islamic countries and from from less developed parts of the world. And that part has certainly increased.
00:20:20
Speaker
My question to you would be on that component. Do you think that migration from fundamentalist Islamic countries can work, and then the follow-on, is a religion like Islam compatible with a Western liberal democracy like Australia?
00:20:35
Speaker
Well, I don't think you can talk in blanket terms about Islamic countries. The majority of people of Islamic descent who come to Australia, on my last advice, did not come from the Middle East.
00:20:53
Speaker
It came from countries in Asia. You only have to think of the Islamic component of migration from India, from Pakistan.
00:21:04
Speaker
And India has, um I think, a larger Islamic population than Pakistan. They surprise a lot of people. And you've got Bangladesh, of course.
00:21:17
Speaker
The good thing is that they all play cricket, and and and that is... a unifying aspect. Look, you've always got to worry about extremism.
00:21:29
Speaker
And we've had the ah growth since the 7th of October of anti-Semitism in Australia, which is appalling and something which the current government failed to give leadership on from day one.
00:21:41
Speaker
But I am very reluctant to apply blanket bans associated with religion on particular sources of migration. I'm all in favour of condemning the practice, but not in a blanket way condemning the association by source. That's not fair.
00:22:06
Speaker
And it misunderstands the fact that right at the moment there's a debate going on about certain Islamic groups in Australia campaigning against Labour candidates in traditional Labour strongholds, in Labour voting parts of Sydney, a bit like what happened in Britain in the last election where a couple of safe Labour seats were grabbed by these groups.
00:22:34
Speaker
Now, some of the fiercest critics of these groups are other Islamic people, highly respectable community leaders saying this is the wrong way, this is bad for us, it's bad for our community, it's bad for our faith now.
00:22:48
Speaker
We are, by tradition and history, a nation that has been shaped by the Judeo-Christian ethic. Now, I frequently say that the moral title deeds of Australia are to be found in the Judeo-Christian ethic.
00:23:08
Speaker
Now, that doesn't mean that we reject other religions, but it does mean that we hold to the values that our moral code have given us. And those values include tolerance, they include respect for minorities, but they include, above everything else, a total rejection of any kind of discrimination based on religion. That is why I and many other Australians are appalled at the abuse that's been meted out to some of our Jewish citizens.
00:23:44
Speaker
People who've contributed massively to this country since the first settlement way back all those years ago. You mentioned earlier in that answer that the problems of Islamic extremism, and ah no one will disagree with you on that, but I think a lot of Australians as well look at the multicultural project, not in terms of just the extreme elements of of particular cultures, but they'll go into parts of Western Sydney, for example, and they'll walk through particular areas and they will say, this just doesn't feel like Australia anymore. This doesn't feel like this is an integrated part of Australian culture.
00:24:17
Speaker
When you think of those areas that this multicultural project we can say has failed, Well, I have never been ah fan of the philosophy of multiculturalism.
00:24:30
Speaker
Never. And I think if you look back over my yeah political career, you'll find at various times I got into fights and arguments with people because of comments I made.
00:24:41
Speaker
I am ah multiracialist. I'm not a multiculturalist. I've not met a multicultural man or woman. I've met plenty of bicultural men and women.
00:24:53
Speaker
I've had close friends who are obviously deeply imbued with a Greek or Italian or Hungarian culture and people who are Indian, Anglo-Indians.
00:25:08
Speaker
But they're all, it's a bicultural thing. And I think it's the whole idea of multicultural and there's many European leaders, including Angela Merkel and others found, is some It has proved to be a bit of a ah diversion. It's led us down wrong paths and it produces a mentality where you seek a nation that's the product of a federation of cultures.
00:25:36
Speaker
Now, I don't seek that. I seek an Australian nation which adheres to its moral title, as I mentioned earlier, plainly our institutions,
00:25:49
Speaker
are essentially of British origin? Not by any means, totally. But does anybody really argue after what happened in the United States a few months ago that we should alter our system of parliamentary democracy in favour of an American presidential system?
00:26:08
Speaker
No, I don't think they do Does anybody argue against the genuinely free media? No. the rule of law. We must maintain a rule of law. We must maintain that essential separation between the role of the courts, which is to interpret and declare the law as passed by Parliament.
00:26:30
Speaker
And above everything else, we have to understand that when you have a big, difficult social issue, it's the people who should determine the direction, not the courts. And i just look at them. I mean, I don't wish to initiate a discussion about the difficult issue of abortion but I just think of the appalling situation we now have where all those years ago with Roe v Wade the court declared what the situation was and then years decades later that was reversed and now we have this mishmash situation now in Australia that's largely been determined whether you agree with the outcome or not it's been determined by the parliament by the people and
00:27:14
Speaker
I think our system is far superior in that system. Let's move to Australia's position in the world.
Australia's International Relations
00:27:20
Speaker
You go back to the 1990s, early 1990s, and I'm going to put forward a a crude dichotomy.
00:27:27
Speaker
It wasn't this simple, but you had someone like Paul Keating who was advocating much closer ties with China. um You had yourself on the right suggesting that our primary responsibility and focus should still be um cut with countries that share our values,
00:27:40
Speaker
you know United States, UK, and so on. And we now are at a point in 2025 where there are problems on both sides. So the threat from China has never been greater. The problem of Taiwan could be red hot in in a couple of years.
00:27:54
Speaker
And at the same time, the the US is is moving in a very different direction to what it was when when you had such a close relationship with George W. Bush. Given those problems, how how should Australia be looking at its piece in the world today?
00:28:07
Speaker
With the very greatest respect, Will, I don't think the challenges that the Trump administration has thrown up mean that America is heading in a totally different direction.
00:28:19
Speaker
The fundamentals of American society are not going to be altered by Donald Trump. It is still a nation that believes in the individual, believes in the centrality of the family, is guided very much by the Judeo-Christian ethic.
00:28:37
Speaker
is a nation that thinks somebody's worth is determined by his or her hard work and contribution to society. Now, nothing that Donald Trump says, and I don't disagree with all that he's done, but gee, I totally disagree with his tariff policy. I think it's economically wrong, and it will work to the disadvantage of his own country. But I think it's a gross overreaction.
00:29:06
Speaker
for people to say, well, because of that, we've got to re-evaluate our relationship with the United States. No, we don't do that. We certainly understand what it means.
00:29:18
Speaker
Look, the difference between the United States and China, for example, remains irrespective of who is currently President of the United States and who's President of China.
00:29:31
Speaker
The systems are different. China's a communist dictatorship. America is a liberal democracy. What should the position be then specifically when it comes to China and how should Australia prepare for potentially conflict in the Pacific by the time the decade is out, which we certainly can't discount as a possibility?
00:29:53
Speaker
Well, one of the things we should do is what we've already done with AUKUS. There's no doubt that the decision to enter into AUKUS with its objective in the medium to longer term of having nuclear-powered submarines is to enable us to deal more effectively with a more unsettled region.
00:30:16
Speaker
China's become more aggressive. I dealt with two Chinese presidents before the current one, Junker Min and with Hu Jintao.
00:30:28
Speaker
Both of them were communist dictators. but they didn't have the same belligerent attitude towards the region that Xi Jinping has.
00:30:39
Speaker
Although he's the leader of the same political party, the Chinese Communist Party and so forth. But I think you have to, in all of these things, maintain a sense of perspective.
00:30:55
Speaker
We have seen understandable rejections. of the Trump administration's policies on tariff. I deprecate very strongly the apparent humiliation of the Ukrainian president.
00:31:12
Speaker
That was wrong. He's a courageous leader of a country who is a victim of communist Russia's aggression. Now, I hope, like most people do, that we can have some kind of honorable peace settlement in Ukraine.
00:31:30
Speaker
We'll see, but we can only hope that will come about. But I don't think we should lose sight of the fact we still have ah set of liberal democratic values that determines the approach of most countries that we identify with and a dictatorial attitudes that govern the behaviour of other countries.
00:31:53
Speaker
And that, of course, is why I find the attempt to draw a moral equivalence between ah dictatorships in the state of Israel are just appalling. Israel is the one true liberal democratic country in the Middle East, country I admire enormously and it's a country we should continue to be very friendly with and we should continue to respect.
Upcoming Elections and Leadership Comparison
00:32:17
Speaker
Let's hone in on the choice that Australians will make in a couple of weeks' time, under a couple of weeks' time now. And something which you were very good at as a politician was being able to communicate in clear language the choice that Australians face.
00:32:29
Speaker
I remember as a political nerd growing up, the point that you made in 2001 election, it's about trust, ah which turned on its head a lot of the criticisms from you from the left. If you were to make your pitch today, let's say you could say you're coming out of retirement, if you were to make your pitch today for the Liberal Party or the coalition in this coming election, what does the choice look like for Australian people?
00:32:50
Speaker
Well, I would say that it is an issue of trust. mean, who do you trust to really do something about the difficult challenge cost of living?
00:33:02
Speaker
A man in the current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, who said he would reduce some power billed by what? $274. He specified an amount and has failed to do so.
00:33:16
Speaker
Somebody who in three years has presided over a decline in our living standards. Do you trust him or the alternative? Now, nobody argues that the liberal opposition has instantaneous solutions.
00:33:32
Speaker
That's unreal. But at least the the sheer responsibility and modesty that their alternative offering means that they are more to be trusted.
00:33:44
Speaker
And they represent a tradition in Australian politics which over the years has been criticised for being too austere, too disciplined, too focused on balancing the books.
00:34:00
Speaker
Now, isn't that what the Australian community desperately needs at the moment? People in charge. who actually worry about the bottom line, who worry about whether you are spending more than you collect.
00:34:16
Speaker
So I would say you trust to deliver that state of affairs. The people who in three years have trashed their own commitments or the alternatives are of a long tradition of responsible, careful,
00:34:32
Speaker
economic management. I'd have suggest that the coalition maybe isn't austere enough today. If if you look at Abbott, when he became prime minister, he made a concerted attempt at deficit reduction.
00:34:44
Speaker
He was met with a vicious response. I think that scared subsequent coalition prime ministers. I haven't heard as much as i would like about debt and deficit reduction, despite the fact that it is at scary levels, not just in Australia, but across the West, mind you.
00:34:56
Speaker
Is it harder to tell the story today about deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility than it once was? And if so, how do you make that case to the Australian people today? I don't think it varies all that much from period to period. Obviously, when you get the debt paid off, which my government did, we inherited a lot of debt and we paid it all off.
00:35:21
Speaker
There's a ah bit of a sense of, oh, we've finally made it. relaxation in the community. But that's a false euphoria. I think people understand because it's their daily experience.
00:35:36
Speaker
They worry. I mean, I've heard more stories from what I would call loosely middle-class areas of Sydney of people worrying about where the next the where the next night out is coming from.
00:35:54
Speaker
let alone the idea of the annual family holiday. And these are not the extravagances of the wealthy upper middle class. They are the sort of things that so many Australian and British and American families have accepted as their entitlement. They work hard, they do well, and they find that it's just not going as far as it used to.
00:36:19
Speaker
So it it's a real issue. And you talk about trust. I don't think people feel like trusting the next three years to people who've failed over the last three years.
00:36:31
Speaker
I agree with that. But at the same time, there does seem to be a reluctance to trust the, if you look at the polls and the way they've turned in the last month, people are still hesitant to go that next step and trust the incoming or an incoming coalition government.
00:36:44
Speaker
Why do you think there is that reticence? Well, i first of all, I'm not sure that the reticison exists reticence exists. I've been through a lot of election campaigns and I've seen a lot of polls. and Sometimes I've been amazed. Sometimes I've been confirmed in my dread or expectation. It's bit hard to tell. This is a very difficult election to tell because we not only have a number of seats that were won last time by
00:37:18
Speaker
a sort of a middle group called Teals, who attracted the support of a lot of traditional Liberal voters who were cranky with the Liberal Party because of its attitude on climate change.
00:37:31
Speaker
Now, I'm not saying they have all of their views. What I'm saying is that they may not give quite the same priority to climate change as they did on the last occasion. i just don't know.
00:37:45
Speaker
I think it's very difficult to predict. and the margin is tight. I naturally am working my insides out because I think Peter Dutton would do a far more careful, attentive, responsible, stable job as Prime Minister.
00:38:04
Speaker
People want their country run by somebody who's serious, who's got a strong, simple set of values and beliefs. And Peter Dutton's the man for that. What are your reflections on anthony al be Anthony Albanese as Prime Minister and as a political leader?
00:38:19
Speaker
Well, look, I'm not here. I'm not going to denigrate him as a man. I don't know him well. I had a bit to do with him. He came into Parliament the year that I became Prime Minister.
00:38:32
Speaker
And I had a somewhat, he came in in 96. He represents inner city electorate in the area Sydney I know very well. He's I'm sure he's a well-intentioned man, but he's fundamentally out of his depth.
00:38:46
Speaker
You know that description derived from struggling to swim. and think he's been struggling to swim as Prime Minister ever since he got the job.
00:38:58
Speaker
Now, you can say somebody's too arrogant for a job to do something else. and i I dealt with a lot of Labour leaders. Bob Hawke was a standout.
00:39:10
Speaker
Bob Hawke, in my view, and I stress the adjective I'm about to use, it Bob Hawke has been, in my view, the best Labour Prime Minister of Australia said.
00:39:21
Speaker
Now, even though I disagreed with Bob Hawke on many issues, particularly on industrial relations issues and on some other economic and foreign policy issues, I never thought he was out of his depth.
00:39:35
Speaker
I thought it sometimes he talked nonsense, as he no doubt thought i talked nonsense. But I never thought he was out of his debt, whereas I do feel that Anthony Albanese, he's just not up to the job.
00:39:46
Speaker
And I think that's coming through with a lot of people. And it is your belief that Peter Dutton is up to the job? Oh, yes. I've seen enough of him to be satisfied of that.
00:39:57
Speaker
And he will, like everybody, he will have challenges and all of that, but I know enough of him to respect his integrity and decency and capacity to work his way through difficult issues.
Conclusion and Reflections on National Identity
00:40:14
Speaker
Mr Howard, I want to finish where we started. That is a vision for Australia. I'm hopeful that we will get to a point where our current crop of political leaders can communicate a very compelling vision for the country because I think it is something that the country is crying out for, which is bold, visionary leadership.
00:40:31
Speaker
You put forward a vision for Australia, and I think, again, it is something which people always respected about you, whether they loved you or hated you. They knew what you stood for and what you were trying to do. If you were to modify that vision that we talked about at the outset, which is now 30 years old, what would be your vision for Australia today?
00:40:50
Speaker
I tell you I don't particularly want to modify it I remain somebody who believes passionately that the Australian achievement,
00:41:02
Speaker
which I call it, has been a remarkable success. We are a stable, tolerant, liberal, open democracy. And um I think that's been our achievement.
00:41:15
Speaker
We've made mistakes. I mean, we took a long time to understand that we had to come to terms with the relationship between Aboriginal Australians and the rest of the community, not through a voice of but just through ah drive to make sure that they share to the full the bounty that this country has to offer.
00:41:39
Speaker
i think we have been successful in the past. i I think we are a respected country around the world. Why do millions of people want to come to Australia?
00:41:50
Speaker
They don't come to Australia to import into our society what they have to offer, although they do. They really come because of what we have to offer. This is something that people who criticize any attempt to control migration lose sight of.
00:42:09
Speaker
People come to Australia because of who we are, not because of who they want us to become. And we should always keep sight of that. so They remain very much the sort of, we are an open society. We should be proud of what we've done. Not as proud of what we have achieved.
00:42:29
Speaker
And we should always remember that it one when it comes to and national friendships, it's nations who are united by common values, they are the closest.
00:42:41
Speaker
Those nations that have similar values to Australia, countries such as the United Kingdom of Ireland, of America, of New Zealand, of India, they are united, in some cases united by sport, other cases no but It's the commonality of values that binds people together more than anything else.
00:43:07
Speaker
Mr. Howard, this has been a great privilege. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you. good to talk to you.