00:00Is anyone winning this at the moment?
00:04No, I think it's pretty much as advertised, a neck-and-neck race, and it's too early
00:10to tell.
00:11Look, it certainly is.
00:12What are you going to be looking at?
00:14Is there any particular state or part of a state that you're interested in to give you
00:18a sign of where this is going to go?
00:20Well, I'd be looking at those areas where you can get, even in states which are solidly
00:26one way or the other, where you can get a contrast between what happened in 2020 and
00:32what happened today, so you can see the trends in voting and whether you can extrapolate
00:37from that.
00:38But, look, it's a huge country, and it's very complex, voluntary voting, which obviously
00:44we don't have in Australia, so turnout is important.
00:48And whether people do turn out and, you know, on what issues is critical.
00:53Well, it's a toss-up at the moment.
00:55You've written an essay heading into this election about, well, what's at stake for
00:59Australia and also how to deal with Donald Trump, should he be back in the White House.
01:04You as Prime Minister had to deal with him, and we famously know your first phone call
01:10was a pretty robust one over the refugee resettlement deal.
01:14What is your advice to Anthony Albanese, but other leaders too, about how to deal with
01:18Trump?
01:19Well, my advice is that you should not do what everyone will tell you to do, which is
01:23to suck up to him.
01:24I mean, the newspaper columns are full of people, not all of them are grifters, but
01:28a lot of them are, who are saying, oh, you've got to suck up to him and flatter him.
01:34And of course, people typically do that to guys like Trump, because they're big, you
01:38know, bullying, bombastic, narcissistic personalities, and a lot of people naturally want to do that.
01:45The problem with that is that that's what Trump wants, of course.
01:49But you don't win his respect that way, and you won't get what you want to achieve.
01:53So if all you want is a pat on the head and a photo op, then I suppose you can do that.
01:59But if you want to actually want to get good outcomes, in my case for Australia, you've
02:04got to be able to stand your ground and make your case.
02:07And I did so on a number of issues and incurred his displeasure, you know, famously over the
02:13refugee deal.
02:15But I got the outcome Australia needed.
02:17So what would that mean, for example, should Trump be back and want to impose the tariffs
02:21he's promised globally of 10 to 20 percent?
02:26Australia would obviously want to carve out from that.
02:27We'd be wanting to say, hey, we're pretty good friends here, give us a break.
02:31How should our prime minister approach that?
02:33Well, I actually faced exactly that problem with the steel tariffs.
02:38And I persuaded, now, this is where, you know, I wasn't saying to Trump, I'll remember
02:43all our years of mateship and all the wars we fought in.
02:47I made a thoughtful, business-like economic argument to him that it wasn't in his interest
02:55to impose those tariffs.
02:57We went into a lot of detail.
02:59It was an intelligently transactional discussion.
03:03And I persuaded him to change his mind and to do so against the advice of a lot of his
03:11trade advisers like Lightiser and, you know, his commerce secretary and so forth.
03:16So he, you know, the critical thing about him, though, David, and this is really the
03:22guts of it, a normal, you know, regular president or prime minister will have staff and advisers
03:29and a whole official system that you can interact with.
03:34Now, with Trump, he'll have those people, but he doesn't pay a lot of attention to them.
03:39So the advocacy really is down to the prime minister or, you know, the counterpart, the
03:46prime minister or the president or whatever the other country is.
03:48What about the ambassador?
03:49Does the ambassador matter much with Trump?
03:51Well, much less with Trump.
03:54Much, much, much less with Trump.
03:55I mean, Joe Hockey did, you know, work really hard, was a good ambassador, tried to engage
04:02with a lot of the Trump people.
04:03Played golf with him?
04:04Well, yeah, he was at a golf match, but he had nothing to do with the critical negotiations
04:09with Trump.
04:10And that's no reflection on him.
04:12I don't think any ambassador.
04:13So it won't matter that Kevin Rudd has said things in the past about Trump?
04:16You don't think that matters?
04:17The worst thing we could do is withdraw Kevin, because, you know, News Corp or the Australian
04:24or Sky News says we should.
04:25I mean, that is I mean, they've got an axe to grind, you know, I'll understand why.
04:30But the reality is, if you give in to bullies, all you do is get more bullying.
04:36So you so I stood up to Trump, I had a real row with him, but he wasn't happy with me.
04:42He was furious.
04:43But I won his respect.
04:45And that was extremely valuable for Australia.
04:48Orcus, we know you're not a fan of the nuclear submarine deal.
04:51Well, it's not a question of me.
04:53I just don't think we'll get any.
04:55You're also in the essay you've written quite pessimistic, I suppose, about the bargaining
04:59position that we're in.
05:00Should Trump win?
05:02Because we really need these submarines.
05:04Well, that's not it's not that's the real the problem is that we that they need them.
05:09This is the real problem is we were under their law.
05:13And so I don't think this is really a Trump issue, to be quite honest with you.
05:16The deal you gave me to Kamala Harris, these are at risk.
05:20The problem is that we cannot get the Virginia class submarines under the American Orcus
05:27legislation unless the president at the time certifies that their Navy doesn't need them.
05:35They are already at least 17 Virginia class submarines short of where they need to be.
05:41But couldn't the president reducing half as many as they their Navy needs to sustain them?
05:46But couldn't the president say, well, hang on, Australia is chipping in a fair bit of
05:49money to our industrial base.
05:50They're stepping up in the region.
05:52This is this a pretty good deal for us.
05:54No, but he's got to say he's got to say he's.
05:57He or he or she has got to say that the provision of those submarines would not detract from
06:04the underwater capabilities of the U.S. Navy.
06:07And you know as well as I do that that it's not just Donald's motive.
06:14America first is the zeitgeist.
06:16You know, if you've got the U.S. Navy saying we can't spare them, what chance is there
06:21of an American president saying, I'm going to take these subs that you say our Navy says
06:27you need?
06:28They need.
06:29Finally, is the problem is we haven't got we've got no leverage, you see.
06:32So we've done a bad deal and you won't get you you're not going to get any respect from
06:37Donald Trump, a property developer, for doing a dumb deal.
06:40Finally, is it clear to you what a Kamala Harris presidency would mean for our region
06:45and this critical China U.S. relationship?
06:47Well, I think it would mean more continuity, I mean, more predictability.
06:52So, you know, you would I would expect, you know, more continuity from what we've seen
06:59with Biden, her main foreign affairs adviser is a man called Philip Gordon, who is a very
07:05clear eyed, you know, professional diplomat and foreign policy expert.
07:13And I think it's I think it'll be hard headed, focused, but consistent.
07:18The issue with Trump, of course, is the erratic, flaky, unpredictable part of it, which, of
07:24course, he does deliberately.
07:25I mean, that's part of his style.
07:28So it's not a it is a feature, not a bug.
Comments