Tony Abbott, former Prime Minister of Australia, joins me on the show to talk about the state of the world and his vision for the world in a post-World War II world. We also talk about his views on climate change and the future of Australia's relationship with China.
00:00:50.820There's so much to talk about as well.
00:00:52.820One of the things that would be very interesting to hear from you, given all your experience, is when you look out at the world today, we're sitting here in February 2025, what do you see?
00:01:04.480What do you think is important that's going on?
00:01:08.000I think it's a more fraught and a more dangerous world than at any time in my life.
00:01:13.780But I am much encouraged by the second coming of Donald Trump, not because I always agree with him, but because I think he is at heart standing against the politics of climate and identity, which has done so much damage over the last couple of decades.
00:01:34.060And at heart, he believes in America as a fundamentally good society.
00:01:40.960And I think patriots everywhere should be encouraged by this resurgence.
00:01:50.800And do you think that is bleeding through?
00:01:53.040Are you seeing in Australia shifts happening, maybe here in the UK, elsewhere in the Anglosphere and the rest of the West?
00:01:59.080I like to think that the second coming of Trump marks the moment when woke started to die.
00:02:09.840I was very encouraged by the Brexit vote, but unfortunately, a defeatist and declinist establishment in this country fought back to substantially negate what should have been a new beginning for Great Britain.
00:02:27.420I was very encouraged by the result of the referendum on Indigenous separatism in Australia a year or so back.
00:02:46.900But thus far, at least in our country, green left governments have gone on as if nothing had really changed.
00:02:54.520I think this time, given that the American public voted quite decisively for Trump, knowing exactly what he's like, knowing his strengths, knowing his weaknesses, notwithstanding all the lawfare that's been waged against him, I think this is a decisive moment.
00:03:15.740It's certainly an even more decisive moment than those previous fightbacks against the woke mind virus, which is doing so much damage.
00:03:26.200Tony, you were saying that the world is in a fraught place, possibly the most fraught in your lifetime.
00:03:37.520Bearing in mind when you think about the Cold War and blah, blah, blah and all the rest of it.
00:03:41.300Well, look at the three obvious flashpoints.
00:03:48.760The Russian aggression against Ukraine, which looks to be steadily succeeding.
00:03:55.900Look at the Iranian-inspired attacks on Israel, which look to have been rebuffed for the moment, but the future is still extremely difficult.
00:04:13.000Look at the Chinese communist bullying of all its neighbours.
00:04:19.280Consider the array of dictatorships now threatening the West, the militarist dictatorship in Moscow, the communist dictatorship in Beijing, the Islamist dictatorship in Tehran, and their allies and sympathisers around the world.
00:04:38.960Consider that on the one hand, consider what until very recently has been the defeatism and the declinism, the chronic cultural self-doubt, even self-loathing of the great democracies.
00:04:53.040I mean, think of America, guilted about slavery.
00:04:59.440Think of Britain, guilted about the empire.
00:05:03.000Think of Australia, guilted over indigenous dispossession.
00:05:06.800Now, there's no doubt slavery was an evil, a terrible evil.
00:05:11.560There's no doubt that there was a downside as well as a great upside to the British Empire.
00:05:17.180And there's no doubt that the dispossession of indigenous people in Australia caused much suffering.
00:05:26.340But despite these things, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia are three of the most wonderful societies on Earth, arguably the best countries there have ever been.
00:05:39.900And the fact that so many people want to get across the Rio Grande, get across the English Channel, get across the Timor Sea to come to Australia.
00:06:15.300But if we look at particularly at China, I talk to a lot of Aussies and they're really worried about China because they kind of see and push back.
00:06:24.820If you disagree with that as the Chinese invasion of Taiwan as inevitable.
00:06:29.920Well, I always try to make a sharp distinction between the Chinese government and the Chinese people.
00:06:39.660The Beijing regime is obviously set on world domination.
00:06:47.280I mean, Chinese leaders have been saying again and again over the past few years that the clear objective, their clear objective is to be the global hegemon by mid-century.
00:07:01.980And their immediate objective is to take back Taiwan, as they see it, by force, if necessary, as quickly as possible.
00:07:10.320So I think that it is almost inevitable that there will be a crisis over Taiwan in the next few years.
00:07:20.200The only way to possibly avoid it and certainly bring it to the least unsatisfactory outcome is for the Beijing leadership to clearly understand
00:07:37.060that there is a strong democratic alliance ranged against them.
00:07:41.620And any attack on Taiwan would not pit 1.4 billion Chinese against 25 million Taiwanese, but it would pit China, if not against the whole world, certainly against a strong democratic alliance.
00:07:58.660Because obviously President Trump came into office on the promise of no more foreign wars.
00:08:04.680Because the talk from him and his team is very, you know, there is a sense that they're, I think, quite rightly, but reminding Europe that European matters are Europe's obligations to deal with.
00:08:19.240And I heard a friend of ours who's been on the show a number of times, Seb Gorka, who we know very well, who is very anti-Putin.
00:08:27.220But he was basically saying, look, you know, the future of the Baltic states, we go to the Baltic states.
00:08:34.320We're very encouraged by the way that they are looking after their defense.
00:08:37.740It's time for other European nations to step up.
00:08:40.600And he's basically, you know, I think the message from the Trump White House is France, Germany, Britain and other countries need to step up.
00:08:47.760But is there that sense of unity among Western democracies now?
00:08:52.720Is there that sense of, you know, how many people in Western Europe are going to be prepared to really take a strong stance on Taiwan if push comes to shove?
00:09:02.200Look, we have yet to see how the Trump presidency plays out, although there are all sorts of very interesting early indicators.
00:09:15.920It's true that Trump is constantly telling the Europeans and others that they need to do more.
00:10:42.280But I think he will want to leave America stronger and more secure than he found it.
00:10:50.060And I think that means a world where American values, which I like to think are Western values, and I like to think have elements, important elements of universal values.
00:11:03.140I think he will want to leave a world where American values are more respected and more widely adhered to.
00:11:10.500And what have you made on the other side of renaming the Gulf of Mexico and talking about annexing Canada as a 51st state?
00:11:20.540Do you think this is kind of just talk or is there more to this?
00:11:24.880Well, it's on a par with me saying something like, look, Australia might become the 51st state on condition that America re-embraces the monarchy.
00:11:34.460I think it's a little bit of braggadocio, if you like.
00:24:11.720We don't even have nuclear power, let alone nuclear weapons.
00:24:18.360Let me just elaborate on the question a tiny bit.
00:24:21.480Because when you talk about the need to stand up and be strong and peace for strength, I guess it seems to me that in the world in which we have nuclear weapons, I think this is one of the biggest issues with Ukraine.
00:24:35.160Look, I can sit here and say we didn't give them enough support.
00:24:55.260So in a world that there are nuclear weapons in, how do Western democracies that don't want a global nuclear holocaust, how are we going to say to China, which has nuclear weapons, you can't do this?
00:25:10.240How are we going to say to another country, to Russia, you can't do this, you can't do that?
00:25:16.600Well, notwithstanding the existence of nuclear weapons, the world prior to 2020, let's say, was more free, more fair, more safe and more rich for more people than at any time in human history.
00:25:31.940Notwithstanding the Cold War and the nuclear arms race and so on, because for all the faults of Soviet communism, there was a rationality to them.
00:25:49.280And no rational person would want to see wide-scale use of nuclear weapons.
00:25:58.420The real problem, I think, with nuclear weapons is if they fall into the hands of people who are not rational or whose rationality is apocalyptic.
00:26:12.980This is why I think it's absolutely critical that the Ayatollahs in Tehran never get their hands on a nuclear weapon.
00:26:21.460Because what even to the commissars in Beijing, even to the militarists in Russia, would look pretty diabolical, might actually look desirable to the Ayatollahs.
00:26:40.280So I think the world can successfully live with nuclear weapons because we've done that since 1945.
00:26:47.880What I don't think we can successfully do is live with nuclear weapons in the hands of people who might exult in using them.
00:26:58.200Because in using them, they might, for argument's sake, wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
00:27:05.460Or in using them, they might, for argument's sake, deal out death to hundreds of millions of infidels who deserve death in accordance with some extreme versions of Islam.
00:27:17.240But what I'm asking, Tony, is a slightly different question with respect, which is that if we live in a world in which Vladimir Putin effectively used the threat of nuclear weapons to prevent us from helping Ukraine enough to win...
00:27:31.480Well, I don't think we should have been bluffed by Putin out of helping Ukraine more by that threat because I believe, in Putin's case at least, it was an empty threat.
00:27:45.720But what I'm asking is, in the world in which we have done that, that's really the big issue here, isn't it?
00:27:53.100Because what's to stop the Chinese saying, you're trying to help Taiwan, we've got nuclear weapons.
00:28:00.140What's to stop everything, Pakistan, India?
00:28:02.300I mean, there are other countries that have nuclear weapons.
00:28:07.060Israel could be saying, well, we want to do this and this and that, and don't you dare try and interfere.
00:28:11.500So how do we put this nuclear thing back in the box?
00:28:17.080Well, we certainly cannot accept that just because a country has nuclear weapons, it cannot be resisted.
00:28:28.620Because once that becomes, if you like, accepted, then every country will try to get nuclear weapons as quickly as it can so that it can threaten anyone and everyone with a kind of a holocaust.
00:28:45.360Now, one of the difficulties, one of the reasons why I think the Ukraine thing has been mishandled by the West, at least until very recently, is that we have allowed Putin's nuclear blackmail to succeed.
00:29:04.660I think his bluff should have been called, certainly it should have been called more forcefully than it has.
00:29:10.880I mean, I think it should have been made absolutely crystal clear that the objective was not to invade Russia.
00:29:18.860The objective was simply to restore Ukraine and all necessary force would have been permitted up to that point, the restoration of Ukraine.
00:29:33.500Unfortunately, the Americans and the Europeans, I think, have been too susceptible to that nuclear blackmail.
00:29:42.740And Tony, how close are the Iranians to getting a nuclear weapon?
00:29:47.480Because obviously, the moment they get their hands on one of them, the game changes completely.
00:29:53.780And for a nation that has been, let's be pretty blunt about where they see Israel's future, that's terrifying, isn't it?
00:30:15.480I probably have the opportunity to talk with more very well-informed people than most, but I don't claim to have any particular inside knowledge.
00:30:32.620I think it's obvious that the Iranians are quite close to a nuclear weapon.
00:30:39.980Just because if you listen to what people whose business it is to know as much as we can about this, if you listen to them, they seem convinced that Iran is more a matter of months than years.
00:31:10.160So we are months away from the Ayatollah, potentially, right, maybe from...
00:31:19.340Unless, unless, unless something can be said or done that interrupts, interrupts their obvious march towards it.
00:31:35.600Well, the weird thing about it is, it's like you say months and I'm horrified and shocked.
00:31:40.940And at the same time, I do think, you know, you talk about them not being rational.
00:31:45.120And of course, we know the ideology behind them is, to our mind, not rational.
00:31:49.280But from a simply nation perspective, getting nuclear weapons for Iran is the most rational thing possible to do from their perspective, because they then secure themselves against the potential for American aggression.
00:32:05.620They can threaten Israel in a totally different way.
00:32:09.040So they would be going at it very hard.
00:32:12.540So what, what, what, if you were, you know, if you were advising the president of the United States, what would you be saying about Iran?
00:32:19.580Well, I would be saying what I've said to you, that I think that nuclear proliferation is bad.
00:32:31.240But proliferation, but proliferation into the hands of a regime which is not rational by our standards, which, at least in terms of its public statements, often seems to exhibit a kind of an apocalyptic approach to, to things.
00:32:53.140So that's a problem on a much higher, deeper level.
00:32:59.540Because what you're talking, I mean, if they get a nuclear weapon, well, we'd say they're not rational by our standards.
00:33:07.920Let's just call them what they are, which is they're Islamists.
00:33:11.800They believe in the complete destruction and evisceration of Israel and the Jewish homeland.
00:33:20.380And why, if you think like that and you have that worldview and you are rabidly anti-Semitic, why wouldn't you fire a nuclear warhead into Israel?
00:33:33.000Well, this is exactly why I think it is critical that the Iranians, under their current leadership, not get nuclear weapons.
00:33:46.120Well, that's something that I am sure the Israeli prime minister and the Israeli leadership is thinking about almost all the time.
00:33:59.920And I suspect that it's something that whatever else might be on his mind, the new president and the new administration will be thinking about.
00:34:11.020Tony, moving on slightly, but it's actually the same conversation in a way, which I'm sure you'll recognize.
00:34:16.480One of the challenges for Europe in particular, I don't know to what extent it is in Australia, is that in order for us to be better at defending ourselves, protecting our neighbors, et cetera, we have to have strong economies.
00:34:31.600This is something most people don't understand about military and military conflict and war, et cetera.
00:34:36.780You've got to have a strong economy and a strong industrial base to be able to build up your military, to be able to defend yourself.
00:34:45.740And as you well know, we have been doing exactly the opposite.
00:34:51.200Most of our manufacturing is now made in other countries.
00:34:54.840We're closing down steel furnaces left, right and center.
00:34:58.740We're closing down oil production, all of this.
00:35:02.000Do you think we're going to have a wake-up moment when it comes to things like net zero?
00:35:08.720Well, there's no doubt that over the last decade or so, we've been engaged in a process of military, economic and cultural unilateral disarmament.
00:35:22.920There does need to be a rebuilding of military strength.
00:35:26.800There does need to be a return to economic vigor.
00:35:31.640And there certainly needs to be much more cultural self-belief amongst the democracies, but particularly in the Anglosphere.
00:35:40.700Now, this is where the whole climate cult has done enormous damage, enormous damage.
00:35:48.260Britain has effectively de-industrialized in the name of reducing emissions.
00:35:52.060Australia is in grave danger of doing the same thing.
00:35:58.320Perhaps we aren't quite so far along the path as Britain is.
00:36:02.320But I'm all in favor of protecting the only planet that we've got.
00:36:07.400But this idea that we must at all costs and almost immediately reduce our emissions to net zero is doing us enormous damage.
00:36:24.220And it's not going to save the planet, even if you accept the emissions thesis, because China, India and Russia are increasing their emissions willy-nilly because they put national strength ahead of emissions reduction.
00:36:43.920And under Trump, America is obviously going to put its perceived economic interests ahead of emissions reduction.
00:36:55.440So why inflict harm on yourself if it's not going to do any good?
00:37:03.660And that's even if you accept this idea that the only thing that matters in terms of the climate are human carbon dioxide emissions, which I think is a deeply implausible thesis anyway.
00:37:17.220I love how diplomatic you were about the Americans.
00:37:19.800Their official policy is drill, baby, drill.
00:37:23.200And look, good on them because they should be making the most of their resources.
00:37:27.320And one of the weird things about contemporary Australia, under the current government in particular, is that we are ideologically opposed to those things which are the foundations of our wealth.
00:37:43.900Our three biggest exports are iron ore, coal and gas.
00:37:49.320And we should eliminate our coal and our gas exports.
00:37:57.240And yet, what will we do to replace them?
00:38:05.080We talk about Australia becoming a renewable energy superpower, as if no other country has wind or sun.
00:38:13.380In fact, the only renewable energy superpower is China, because it's making the wind turbines and the solar panels that we are rapidly installing to replace the reliable coal and gas fight power that's been the basis of our prosperity.
00:38:31.720So, look, this is, as my old mentor, Bob Santamaria used to say, a moonbeam from the larger lunacy, and yet it is so widely accepted.
00:38:43.560And again, one of the good things about the Trump ascendancy is that he's speaking very bluntly about the general insanity of this.
00:38:56.140The thing that I never understand about this, and it's a question that I'm sure you've been asked many times, if you're concerned about this, if you're concerned about rising CO2 leading to rising temperatures, leading to rising sea levels, political instability, global instability, if that, then why are we not going all in on nuclear?
00:39:19.960Why are we not putting all the money into nuclear power? Because that seems to be the one source of power that is consistent, that is reliable. Why aren't we doing that?
00:39:31.600Well, that's correct. That's correct. And look...
00:39:35.960Especially in a country like Australia that both has uranium and is very large and not densely populated, where, you know, the safety issues are not quite like in Britain, where it's a tiny country, it doesn't have uranium.
00:39:48.740But the safety issues of nuclear have been enormously overinflated.
00:39:54.540The nuclear industry has demonstrated itself to be incredibly safe over many decades now.
00:40:02.120And you're right, if it really is essential to reduce our emissions to net zero, the only way to do it and keep the lights on and remain an industrial economy, remain a first world economy, is through nuclear power.
00:40:16.920So, on the one hand, you've got, if you like, the climate catastrophism, and on the other hand, you've got this irrational fear of nuclear power, as if a nuclear power station can somehow explode like an atomic bomb.
00:40:33.340Now, I think both of these are just quite wrong, and we need to try to dispel that.
00:40:43.060But I sometimes worry that dispelling the climate catastrophism and dispelling the nuclear fear, it's a bit like medieval people trying to dispel the fear of witchcraft.
00:40:56.040I think it sometimes is, if you like, a modern version of these medieval superstitions.
00:41:03.460Yeah, I think we can't let ourselves get into that mindset, though, Tony, because I feel like the people who are making the point that you're making, you know, I made it in my Oxford speech, and I think that's why it got so shared, is that this is not rational.
00:41:50.380I think a lot of people have been too silent for too long, have treated too many subjects as taboo, because they don't want to create unnecessary, in their eyes, difficulties for themselves.
00:42:07.060And yet there are some fights we just have to have.
00:42:09.640And we cannot operate as a modern world without 24-7 electricity.
00:42:22.460I mean, the modern world absolutely depends upon 24-7 electricity.
00:42:27.080The modern world depends upon energy abundance.
00:42:31.480I mean, poor countries experience energy poverty.
00:42:39.340Life was miserable, brutish, short, in part because people lacked the energy that gives us all of the things we now take for granted.
00:42:50.300So I think we do have to have the necessary arguments on these topics.
00:42:57.480Now, I was often told when I was a party leader, there's no point arguing about the science, because you're not a scientist.
00:43:07.000I'm pleased to say that there are many highly reputable scientists who question the anthropogenic global warming thesis.
00:43:22.560And I certainly think that we need to pay more attention to people like that.
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00:45:03.360But it's so interesting that what has happened now is that we are in this place where we are effectively saying we're going to get poorer.
00:45:17.640We are poor people are going to suffer more.
00:45:20.280There are going to be people who can't afford to pay their heating bills.
00:45:24.100They're going to be the oldest and most likely to be the oldest and most vulnerable.
00:45:29.560And they are sacrificial lambs and we're okay with that.
00:45:34.160I mean, how have we got to this point?
00:45:37.720Well, we've tried to have our cake and eat it too through devices such as saying that there will be a green jobs bonanza as part of this transition to net zero.
00:45:52.520Well, look, in Australia, if you are a coal miner, you are probably earning $200,000 a year, maybe more, simply driving a truck and a coal mine.
00:46:06.980But we are actually, in the pursuit of this so-called green transition, replacing well-paid, respected blue-collar jobs in factories with a will-o'-the-wisp because these green jobs simply aren't eventuating, except in China, where they make the solar panels and the wind turbines.
00:46:34.160Well, this is the point I was going to make, Tony, because, you see, when you make the argument in that way, I can hear somebody saying, well, look, technology advances.
00:46:42.640We're going to lose, you know, the Luddites were trying to stop history in its tracks.
00:47:06.860An amazing thing for a man to be able to have a not highly skilled, necessarily, job where he's sitting in front of a laptop all day and provide for a family of four and have a nice house.
00:47:49.000Well, I don't claim to follow every utterance of British politics.
00:47:58.560Obviously, the current energy minister here in Britain, Miliband, is still a slave to the emissions obsession.
00:48:08.780But I do think I recall the current Chancellor, Reeves, saying that we could not pursue net zero at the expense of economic growth.
00:48:20.640So if there are the beginnings of this kind of a debate inside the current green left British Labour government, maybe there is hope that people are finally waking up to our problem.
00:48:36.340Do you think it's going to be the only real way to win this argument is when people realise what is happening?
00:48:45.360By people, I mean, just the ordinary person going about their day realises a connection between soaring energy bills and this pursuing of green technologies.
00:48:56.560Looking at an economy that is stagnant and realising that it's partly or largely due to deindustrialisation and then going, you know what, sod this.
00:49:10.140And getting rid of every politician who advocates for it.
00:49:14.820I think eventually something like that will happen.
00:49:18.340I just hope things don't have to get disastrously worse before we wake up to ourselves.
00:49:24.820I mean, in the end, facts trump theory.
00:49:27.620And the facts are that the more intermittent renewable power we have, the higher our energy prices go, the less industrialised we are, the poorer we become.
00:49:41.900And when in the pursuit of net zero, the green zealots tell us that we have to get rid of our petrol and diesel powered cars, we have to get rid of our gas boilers, we have to stop eating meat, we can't get on a plane and go for a holiday in Portugal.
00:50:04.760When all of these things start to happen, and they are very much starting to happen now, I think people start to think, hang on, this really is pretty crazy.
00:50:17.020So, Tony, this revolution that's happening in America, how do you think that we can encourage some of that to spread?
00:50:24.260And this is where people mishear a lot, because I don't think a figure who can do similar things in Britain is going to look and sound like Donald Trump.
00:50:33.020This is what people get very confused about, I think.
00:51:26.640I'm not saying we've got to do everything that they do and copy every single thing, but it just seems to me that with our economies being in the state of they are,
00:51:34.060we need a bit of that American oomph and a risk taking and a slight loss of risk aversion that we've all been, frankly, too accustomed to.
00:51:41.900Well, on a different topic, Boris Johnson was able to transform the debate and have a wonderful political success.
00:51:54.820I mean, Boris Johnson seized Brexit, made it his own and won a thumping victory at the 2019 election.
00:52:12.640And on issues like climate, I think, and energy, Boris was fundamentally misguided.
00:52:18.280But nevertheless, that exemplified the ability of a strong politician, even in the British system, to go against the establishment grain and succeed.
00:52:36.160Well, what you're going to need now, though, is someone.
00:52:39.560See, it's the difference between Trump 1 and Trump 2, isn't it, Tony?