Western Standard - Energy politics, immigration, and the crisis of the West

00:00:00.000 I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard.

00:00:28.260 I'm joined today by a very special guest, Tony Abbott.

00:00:31.380 He is the former Prime Minister of Australia.

00:00:34.640 He served as the leader of the opposition from 2009 to 2013

00:00:39.800 and as Prime Minister from 2013 to 2015 as the leader of the Liberal Party.

00:00:49.280 Welcome, Mr. Abbott.

00:00:50.980 I know what you're going to say. You're going to clarify what liberal means.

00:00:53.840 Yes. In Australia, the Liberal Party is a conservative party, broadly.

00:01:00.920 Certainly, we are the most conservative mainstream political party in Australia.

00:01:05.100 Well, you've got the Nationals.

00:01:06.280 Well, the Nationals and the Liberals are traditionally in coalition.

00:01:10.620 And I used to say that a National is a country Liberal and a Liberal is a city National.

00:01:16.740 So there's a difference in culture between the Liberal Party and the National Party,

00:01:21.920 but there's not normally a sharp difference in politics

00:01:25.360 and the Liberal National Coalition in Australia

00:01:28.280 is the equivalent of the Conservative Party here in Catter.

00:01:32.020 And if I may say so for the benefit of your listeners

00:01:34.920 who aren't familiar with Australian politics,

00:01:38.040 my government did two unique things.

00:01:40.960 First, we stopped a wave of illegal migration by boat.

00:01:46.520 We're the only Western government in recent times to have done that.

00:01:49.940 And second, we repealed a carbon tax, and that's pretty rare as well.

00:01:56.320 You did it before with Kool.

00:01:57.240 A government that genuinely repeals a carbon tax doesn't just pretend to repeal a carbon tax while leaving the worst carbon tax in place.

00:02:08.080 We had to give them that right in a start because any conversation I've ever had with an Australian about politics immediately begins with explaining that the liberals are not liberals as we would see it. 0.94

00:02:18.180 I think maybe a holdover from when the liberal parties coming from the British Commonwealth were classical liberal parties, which they no longer, they're now social democratic parties.

00:02:27.760 Well, we had much the same development in Australia in the late 19th century. You had New South Wales liberalism, which tended to be free trade liberalism, and you had Victorian liberalism, which tended to be big government liberalism.

00:02:43.300 And of course, in Australia, liberalism has developed more in a free market way, whereas

00:02:52.520 in North America, liberalism has developed very much into a big government movement.

00:02:58.700 Look, I suppose if you go back to the roots of liberalism, it's about human flourishing.

00:03:06.220 And some of us think that humans flourish best when most free.

00:03:10.960 others think that humans flourish best when most helped typically by government and I guess

00:03:18.260 you know this is one of those arguments which waxes and wanes and it develops differently

00:03:23.940 in different places but it is I guess one of those things that we humans will never get beyond

00:03:31.220 our disputes on issues like this where often enough there's something to be said for either

00:03:38.420 side uh yeah i i suppose i would probably understand the political nomenclature a bit

00:03:43.380 more than most people from canada because uh i know a few hardline libertarians here who still

00:03:47.780 call themselves liberals they're like i'm not giving up the term i think it's a pretty dying

00:03:51.780 battle in north america but i i get it uh uh also i i actually used to play footy uh rugby union no

00:03:59.060 footy rules football aussie in canada i played it i played in the ontario league and very very

00:04:04.020 briefly in the alberta league wow uh didn't i never knew that aussie rules was played it's not very

00:04:09.460 big no very big but uh i might have been a champion aussie rules player if i came to canada oh you

00:04:15.620 would have been the australian because i was a hopeless aussie rules player in australia there

00:04:19.060 were guys who were uh you know just all the australians were always stars on the team and

00:04:23.540 they um you know you over a couple years they admit they probably were not very good there

00:04:28.020 uh i've probably played half a dozen hockey games not not even that in my life but if i went to

00:04:32.260 to australia i'm sure i'd be a superstar just because i i theoretically know how to skate if

00:04:36.840 you could find an ice hockey rig in australia you do bloody well yeah yeah exactly uh okay so uh

00:04:43.460 i'm going to talk about your political career and you know how there might be parallels or

00:04:49.860 lessons for what's happening and what has just taken place in canada uh you served as the leader

00:04:56.120 of the opposition from 2009

00:04:57.920 to 2013. He formed

00:05:00.060 government in 2013.

00:05:05.580 I think you're aware, Kierpolyev has been the leader

00:05:08.020 of the Conservative Party of Canada here.

00:05:09.680 He was a very different kind of leader than we've had

00:05:11.980 for some time.

00:05:14.380 He was certainly more bellicose

00:05:16.200 and

00:05:17.720 populist than, say, Stephen Harper was.

00:05:22.360 Probably had a more

00:05:23.940 finely honed Conservative

00:05:25.780 platform than say Andrew Scheer

00:05:27.440 and certainly a hell of a lot more conservative than we had

00:05:29.900 with Aaron O'Toole, the previous

00:05:31.760 conservative leader

00:05:32.480 he was widely, widely

00:05:35.760 expected to win

00:05:36.980 a mega

00:05:38.940 sweeping super majority government

00:05:41.700 until the liberals swapped

00:05:44.000 out Trudeau with Carney and then

00:05:45.860 to the surprise of

00:05:47.020 pretty much everybody, the liberals came with a hair

00:05:49.800 of winning majority, Polyev did not

00:05:51.780 even win his own seat, he's now running the bio-action

00:05:53.640 here in Alberta in a very safe conservative seat

00:05:55.640 um do you think do you see any parallels between your time in opposition and uh and Pierre Polyev

00:06:02.900 and you know and if so what was the maybe the inflection point where your career has diverged

00:06:09.440 where you failed to win the election but you you did win in 2013 well it's far too soon to write

00:06:17.060 Pierre off because he's going to come back into the parliament we hope and almost certainly will

00:06:22.760 be the leader of the opposition. And while, yes, the election result was a dreadful disappointment

00:06:29.440 for the Conservatives, the Liberals certainly didn't have a smashing win either. They just

00:06:35.640 scraped back. Look, the fundamental point to make is that no election is unlosable. No election is

00:06:43.880 unwinnable. Every election turns very much on the circumstances of the time. And two, significant

00:06:51.300 circumstances changed between late last year when the Conservatives were 20 points up in the polls

00:06:57.300 and the actual election date. First of all, the Liberals swapped out unpopular Trudeau for

00:07:04.500 kind of fresh face, at least in a local context. And second, Donald Trump took office in the United

00:07:13.420 States and immediately waged what looked like a tariff war against Canada. New Zealand was not

00:07:19.040 threatening to annex Australia. No, Australia was not threatening to annex New Zealand. So

00:07:23.920 look, when people feel that their country is under serious threat, they tend to rally around

00:07:33.920 the flag and they tend to rally behind the government of the day. So I think Carney

00:07:41.360 benefited on two counts. First, he was a fresh face and people wanted to give him a chance,

00:07:49.200 a fair go. And second, he looked like he was standing up for Canada against the bully in

00:07:56.900 Washington. So I think that largely explains the loss of the election. Nevertheless, I've got to

00:08:06.600 say that as an anglosphere conservative it disappoints me greatly that there is not a strong

00:08:16.520 tough-minded conservative government here in canada and i think that's what pierre would have led

00:08:22.700 a tough-minded conservative government that made big changes to the energy madness

00:08:32.340 wanted Canada to take advantage of its natural advantages

00:08:37.060 in fossil fuel, didn't want to impose unnecessary costs

00:08:41.860 on people through all of these various carbon taxes

00:08:46.380 and other measures, and I think he also would have been

00:08:50.340 a very proud Canadian who didn't allow the constant dilution,

00:08:58.460 if you like, of core Canada, which is almost inevitable when you've got sustained record

00:09:06.440 immigration. And I think on these two critical topics, Pierre would have run a very different

00:09:13.200 and very much better government than we're likely to get under Mark Carney.

00:09:18.360 So I want to come to immigration, but first I want to touch on carbon tax. You've already

00:09:22.580 mentioned it here uh you repealed your carbon tax i sometimes we 2013 2015 well as well your

00:09:30.980 prime minister um at that time uh i mean carbon tax hadn't even yet become so-called popular in

00:09:39.420 canada we had them we had one in british columbia and it was at least for some time actually revenue

00:09:45.200 neutral uh it but they never stayed revenue neutral it became a revenue collector and then

00:09:50.660 we had the imposition of Alberta carbon tax and then a federal carbon tax on top um you know

00:09:56.440 Trudeau came to power 2015 not campaigning on a carbon tax but he just ended up doing one anyway

00:10:01.520 and then people accepted it Canadians are often like that don't accept the policy imposed without

00:10:06.280 a mandate because once it's there and the sky doesn't fall they they just go with it um and it

00:10:12.760 built such a consensus in the media and the Laurentian expert classes that by the 2021

00:10:21.400 election federally, even the Conservative Party of Canada under Erin O'Toole was running on a carbon

00:10:25.640 tax itself. One that was actually even worse and more interventionist than the liberal one.

00:10:31.560 Between 2021 and now, the consensus radically changed to the point where Mark Carney repealed

00:10:38.680 Well, at least the consumer portion of the federal carbon tax, the industrial portion is still there and it could get worse.

00:10:44.940 But you repealed it at a time when globally they were very much in vogue at all the major international conferences.

00:10:52.580 This is how it is to cure all.

00:10:55.360 How did you in Australia is not known as a major fossil fuel producer.

00:11:01.940 We are. We're the world's biggest coal exporter.

00:11:04.660 and until recently we were the world's biggest gas exporter as well we were we rivaled guitar

00:11:14.440 okay well maybe you are i just not known for it at least uh shame on me and for not maybe not

00:11:20.140 knowing it but um i mean but it plays less of a role as a proportion of its economy than in an

00:11:26.180 alberta certainly uh our three biggest exports are iron ore coal and gas so fossil fuels one way or

00:11:35.820 another are incredibly important to australia not lamb i can't buy lamb it's not from you or not

00:11:40.600 our agricultural exports uh are i think if you if you add up all of our different agricultural

00:11:48.780 exports, our beef, our sheep, our wheat, our wine, that all of them together would not be

00:11:57.200 more than maybe a third or a half of our coal exports in value.

00:12:03.200 Okay. So, but you took on the carbon tax, just as it was becoming very popular globally,

00:12:11.860 particularly in the West, where you're really the only places that oppose these things.

00:12:15.400 um how did you build a coalition against it when you're really swimming against the tide before

00:12:21.920 the kind of global tide have turned against these things global warming climate change hysteria is

00:12:27.380 reaching its peak um that's a difficult time to take on that issue was there a political cost

00:12:35.140 to be paid for it or was it a political winner well derek uh if climate change is approached

00:12:42.380 as a moral issue, the left wins. If climate change is approached as an economic issue,

00:12:49.180 the right wins. And what I said to people was, look, of course, we have got to respect the

00:12:56.780 planet. We only have one. And yes, I accept that climate does change, that mankind does make a

00:13:06.380 difference and that we should do what we can to reduce emissions. But I would always add this

00:13:11.980 critical rider, but not if it costs you your job, costs us our industries, and puts up your cost of

00:13:22.800 living. So I said that, sure, let's do what we can to reduce emissions, but let's not do it by

00:13:30.740 making a great big tax on everything, which is what an emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax

00:13:36.980 is. It's a great big tax on everything. And when I finally abolished the carbon tax about

00:13:43.940 nine months into my government, it was the one and only time in the last two decades that there

00:13:52.380 was a substantial fall in electricity prices. They fell by well over 10% in a quarter because

00:13:59.140 the carbon tax was making such a difference. So what you've got to do to win this argument

00:14:06.400 because people will often tell you that the so-called science is settled.

00:14:12.900 Now, I don't think that's true.

00:14:15.480 Any time you say it's settled, you've been very unscientific.

00:14:18.920 But nevertheless, it's hard to win an argument on so-called climate science,

00:14:25.700 but you can very readily win an argument on the impact of climate policy

00:14:31.780 if the impact of climate policy is to destroy your job

00:14:37.280 and to put your cost of living through the roof.

00:14:40.000 And every time there has been an election in Australia

00:14:44.080 where the centre-right fought hard on this issue

00:14:50.860 against the centre-left's climate cultism,

00:14:54.960 the centre-right has done well.

00:14:56.740 In 2010, in 2013 and in 2019,

00:15:00.060 we in the Australian Liberal National Coalition

00:15:04.460 fought hard on climate and energy

00:15:07.560 saying that we are not going to do anything

00:15:10.180 that is going to badly damage our economy

00:15:12.800 and in all three of those elections

00:15:14.560 we did much better than expected

00:15:18.220 and we had a smashing victory in 2013.

00:15:20.520 So look, politics is always about a contest.

00:15:25.660 If you aren't prepared to create a contest

00:15:28.060 on policy it becomes a beauty contest and what's the point of being in a beauty contest

00:15:36.080 particularly when politics is show business for ugly people um so you've got to create a policy

00:15:41.840 contest and i think the most important immediate policy contest is energy where

00:15:52.480 this climate driven mania for renewables is a form of economic self-harm. I'd put it even

00:16:02.720 stronger than that. In countries like Australia, we are on the verge of committing a form of

00:16:08.000 economic suicide by moving rapidly away from reliable 24-7 fossil fuels to intermittent

00:16:16.740 renewable power because while batteries and solar panels can run a house they cannot run a modern

00:16:24.260 industrial economy and yet that's what we're trying to do in australia and it's insane

00:16:29.940 uh that's a great segue to where i want to go uh with you know there's few countries in the world

00:16:38.100 that are as similar as canada and australia roughly similar geographic size uh vast tracts

00:16:45.940 of our country is for all intents and purposes not practically habitable for area of a land and

00:16:51.940 whatnot so we have you know thin strips of population and huge tracks of uh wilderness

00:16:57.940 wilderness now that's why we put it politely i guess in both countries um you know we're english

00:17:03.460 speaking westminster democracies federations under the crown yeah i mean uh i think the biggest

00:17:10.500 difference in our political systems is that you have a rational senate of some kind we have an

00:17:15.540 elected senate as opposed to a kind of a house of lords type senate ours is even worse than the house

00:17:20.420 of lords because it's it's not even based on if your parents did something if your great

00:17:24.260 grandparents did something of note ours is just did you donate the right amount to the liberal

00:17:27.460 party and it's a very powerful senate unlike the house of lords in britain which can yeah delay but

00:17:33.540 it can't deny yeah uh but overall there is but even the shapes of our economies are very similar

00:17:40.660 heavy heavy in the primary resource extraction and agriculture export focused i mean as an island

00:17:48.740 you're by necessity export focused but we're export focused um you know we've been struggling

00:17:56.820 probably one of the defining issues uh in canadian politics over at least the last 15 years has been

00:18:03.300 resource extraction versus climate change uh hardline environmental protection and the debate

00:18:13.380 appears to be swinging more back in favor of resource development wealth creation right now

00:18:19.120 away from kind of radical green ideology uh at least rhetorically the government the new federal

00:18:27.180 government here is rhetorically more

00:18:29.240 at least less

00:18:31.340 implacably anti-resource development

00:18:33.260 but it's still far too early

00:18:35.320 to see how it's going to

00:18:37.160 manifest itself

00:18:38.600 you know we have

00:18:40.760 actually it's a major Australian project

00:18:43.560 just south of here in the Crowsnest

00:18:45.400 Pass in the Rocky Mountains

00:18:46.680 I think it's

00:18:49.420 a metallurgical coal project

00:18:51.680 and there's you know

00:18:55.340 the opposition to is actually not even from the locals

00:18:58.120 they had a referendum there

00:18:59.740 something like 70% supported it

00:19:01.520 but then you've got folks in cities who actually don't live

00:19:04.120 anywhere near this kind of thing who are

00:19:05.880 up in arms saying this is going to destroy

00:19:08.120 everything

00:19:08.660 as is the case, it's not actually

00:19:12.040 the locals, city dwellers

00:19:13.440 but

00:19:14.120 what are some of the Australian lessons

00:19:18.140 in building consensus around

00:19:19.800 you also have indigenous

00:19:21.740 issues that you face

00:19:23.680 similar to us. It's another one of the major parallels, especially as it develops our economy

00:19:27.520 and resource development. What were some of the major challenges you faced that Canada also faces

00:19:32.420 and perhaps some of the lessons that we can take from the successes you have?

00:19:37.960 Well, Derek, I think that all of the Anglosphere countries face similar problems today.

00:19:46.360 Depending upon the government of the day, they deal with them differently. But I think all

00:19:51.340 the major Anglosphere countries have the problem of economic stagnation, a problem of social

00:19:59.700 fracturing and a problem of strategic peril. I think all of us are in a similar boat and

00:20:08.120 I think that at the heart of the economic stagnation is the politics of climate and I think at the

00:20:17.980 part of the social fracturing is identity politics.

00:20:23.680 So I think we've got to tackle both the politics of climate

00:20:28.320 and identity politics head on as serious centre-right politicians

00:20:35.140 and political movements.

00:20:37.420 And look, as I said earlier, if you approach climate

00:20:43.600 as a moral issue, you're on hiding to nothing

00:20:46.120 because if the climate really is changing

00:20:49.380 and we really do have to reduce emissions to zero

00:20:53.280 as quickly as possible or die, 0.60

00:20:56.880 yes, there's an imperative.

00:21:00.340 If the climate is changing,

00:21:02.640 I don't think it's changing that fast.

00:21:05.700 And to the extent that it's changing,

00:21:08.120 I think it's far from clear

00:21:09.420 that human beings are the key factor.

00:21:12.720 I mean, one of the challenges I always put

00:21:14.700 to the climate alarmists is, how do you explain the ice ages? Because it was a very different

00:21:20.240 climate then, and obviously human beings had nothing to do with it. I think it's far more

00:21:25.620 likely that the biggest impacts on climate are less atmospheric carbon dioxide and sunspot

00:21:32.000 activity and oscillations in the orbit of the Earth around the sun. I mean, it stands to reason

00:21:38.240 that the biggest impact on the Earth's climate is the sun.

00:21:42.340 So you'd think that changes there would be what matter most.

00:21:47.360 But let's put the so-called science of climate change aside for a second

00:21:52.520 and look at the economics of it.

00:21:55.560 If you try to eliminate fossil fuels,

00:22:00.040 not only do you make your energy far more expensive and far less reliable,

00:22:06.500 but you're also in peril just about every aspect of daily life.

00:22:11.480 I mean, look around this room.

00:22:13.280 There's plastic, there's glass, there's steel, there's synthetic cloths.

00:22:20.720 All of these are critically dependent on fossil fuels.

00:22:25.740 I mean, fossil fuels are the feedstock, not just of our power system,

00:22:31.720 but of just about all the things we take for granted in modern life.

00:22:36.080 I mean, these things that are ubiquitous and that every climate activist spends half his life on, these things are impossible without the oil and the gas that goes into making the things that comprise them.

00:22:54.100 So we've got to understand that this emissions fixation is going to cause us to live like the Amish or worse if we take it to its logical conclusion. 1.00

00:23:08.040 I think we just have to keep reminding people that energy is the economy, that you cannot have a community without an economy to sustain it.

00:23:20.620 And if we drive fossil fuels out of our economy, we are making modern life almost impossible.

00:23:28.860 I just think we've got to, I mean, I suppose if you're living in the city, you might think

00:23:34.900 that water comes out of a tap as opposed to a dam.

00:23:39.100 You might think that milk comes in a bottle as opposed to out of a cow.

00:23:44.500 All this stuff comes out of fossil fuels and we've just got to understand that.

00:23:50.620 Okay, I want to switch gears to immigration, kind of tangentially touch on it a little bit so far.

00:23:58.420 You know, wealthy countries are magnets for migration, legal and illegal.

00:24:08.400 There's been a huge shift in public opinion in Canada pretty recently, where we've generally always been,

00:24:17.940 It's been verboten to even talk about having even a mid-level of arrivals, but we just essentially abandoned all controls whatsoever, and we had wild numbers of people just pouring in to a saturation point that we simply couldn't absorb.

00:24:38.400 but it's contributed, it's been one of the major

00:24:40.440 contributing factors to the housing crisis,

00:24:42.700 cost of living crisis.

00:24:45.260 You know, we're

00:24:46.380 not just taking the cream of the crop

00:24:48.060 from other countries now.

00:24:50.740 Some ways we're scraping the barrel.

00:24:52.420 We're getting people who are not good

00:24:54.220 candidates to become members

00:24:56.300 of Western civilization.

00:24:59.540 But that's a very

00:25:00.420 recent

00:25:00.820 transformation of public opinion in Canada where anyone

00:25:04.220 who even, if you even mentioned it

00:25:06.220 in any context other than Moore,

00:25:09.020 you were called a racist, the xenophobe, 0.96

00:25:10.980 bigot. Now even 0.82

00:25:12.660 the Liberals are backing away from what they've done.

00:25:15.600 The Conservatives

00:25:17.120 will raise questions about how the Liberals are coming

00:25:18.780 along on their targets and they'll say, well, you're a racist.

00:25:21.360 Some of their rhetoric

00:25:22.880 hasn't changed. But you cracked

00:25:24.660 down on a lot of illegal

00:25:26.760 migration,

00:25:28.700 which by necessity has to walk

00:25:30.640 across the border into Australia.

00:25:33.840 What kind of political

00:25:34.800 pushback did you get

00:25:36.220 for that, because that was at a time, actually, it would have been just at the time when the

00:25:43.620 migration consensus in Europe was just changing. Angela Merkel had just bullied her EU partners

00:25:49.900 into throwing open the gates and allowing tons of so-called refugees, many of which were not

00:25:56.260 legitimate refugees, just to pour into Germany and to pour into the rest of Europe, straining 1.00

00:26:01.020 social services straining housing and obviously creating major major cultural issues as well

00:26:07.500 um but you were kind of at the tip of the spear there before there had been a i don't know what

00:26:13.340 kind of were australians already on that on that page or were you kind of uh going against the

00:26:19.500 grain by cracking down on migration at that time well what i cracked down on was illegal migration

00:26:25.820 by boat and the problem with illegal migration by boat is a it's illegal but b it's also very

00:26:35.180 dangerous because you get a lot of people drowning at sea so by stopping it you are actually being

00:26:41.900 a humanitarian we'd had a wave of illegal migration by boat in the late 1990s which

00:26:49.820 which was effectively stopped by the Howard government.

00:26:53.380 There was a change of government in 2007

00:26:55.880 and the incoming Labor government reversed the Howard government policies,

00:27:03.060 which had stopped the boats.

00:27:04.360 And naturally enough, the boats started up again.

00:27:08.060 And in the six years of the Labor government,

00:27:11.020 a trickle of illegal migrant boats ultimately became a flood.

00:27:16.320 and I said in opposition that we would stop the boats.

00:27:23.640 I said we would do it by any and all means in our power,

00:27:29.760 including turning boats around and sending them back to Java,

00:27:34.120 which is where 99% of them were coming from.

00:27:37.460 And the response of the then Labor government was to say,

00:27:40.800 A, it's immoral, B, it's illegal, and C, it would cause tension, perhaps even conflict with Indonesia. 0.99

00:27:50.880 And I said, well, I'm sorry, a country which loses control of its borders has ultimately lost control of its sovereignty.

00:27:59.820 It's ultimately subject to a peaceful invasion, and no self-respecting country can put up with that.

00:28:05.520 So when I was elected in 2013, I said that we were implementing these strong border protection policies.

00:28:18.800 One stage, I was told that we'd had advice that this was against international law.

00:28:24.540 And I said, well, let's get better advice, which we did.

00:28:28.800 One lawyer says X, you can normally find another lawyer to say Y.

00:28:33.060 and what we called Operation Sovereign Borders

00:28:39.380 essentially involved stopping these illegal boats

00:28:43.240 on the high seas

00:28:45.800 and instead of bringing them to Australia

00:28:48.380 which is what had happened under the previous government

00:28:50.520 we would send them back to Indonesia 1.00

00:28:54.680 Now, the people of Smokeless were smart

00:28:57.780 so they soon worked out

00:29:00.020 that when an Australian naval or customs vessel hove into view,

00:29:05.360 they would scuttle their ships and our sailors, 0.88

00:29:09.120 being decent human beings, would pick them up.

00:29:14.540 The expectation was we'd then take them to Australia.

00:29:18.900 Well, no, we had a different plan.

00:29:21.200 We put them in a mothership, kept them at sea,

00:29:25.000 And then on a suitably calm night would put them into unsinkable orange life rafts, take them to within a mile or two of Indonesian territorial waters with just enough fuel to get back to Indonesia.

00:29:40.780 So that's a good one.

00:29:42.700 And that's what happened.

00:29:44.000 So look, you know, within maybe three or four months of coming into office, the illegal boats completely stopped.

00:29:53.820 And from early 2014 until, I think, 2022, when the government changed, there wasn't a single illegal boat.

00:30:05.120 We've had a few illegal boats since then, not very many, because the new Labor government, to its credit, having been ferociously opposed to our policies when we put them forward and when we implemented them,

00:30:20.800 And they reluctantly conceded that that actually worked.

00:30:25.680 And while I think there would be some pressure inside the green left to go back to what are effectively open borders, the more sensible people in the current government know that this would be political suicide.

00:30:38.820 And so any illegal boats that have made it to Australia, the occupants have swiftly been deported, which is the only way to approach this.

00:30:51.700 So, look, we sorted illegal migration by boat.

00:30:55.320 What we haven't sorted is mass legal migration.

00:31:00.520 Yeah, that's where I want to go.

00:31:01.160 And over the last decade, legal migration has gone up

00:31:07.060 from about $200,000 a year to about a half a million a year.

00:31:11.400 Even at $200,000 a year, it was far too high.

00:31:15.240 At half a million a year, it's just putting massive downward pressure

00:31:20.900 on wages, massive upward pressure on housing costs,

00:31:25.440 severe strain on physical and social infrastructure,

00:31:30.120 and yes, there are also integration issues

00:31:35.300 with some of the people who are coming

00:31:37.560 and I think what we need to do

00:31:40.960 is first radically scale back the numbers

00:31:45.360 and second, be much more insistent

00:31:48.560 with all of our migrants

00:31:50.160 that if they're coming to Australia,

00:31:52.960 they've got to join Team Australia.

00:31:55.000 They can't simply live in Hotel Australia.

00:31:58.140 Australia has flourished as a country with a predominantly Anglo-Celtic culture

00:32:04.600 and a country with an overwhelmingly Judeo-Christian ethos

00:32:08.680 they are both precious

00:32:11.460 they have to be preserved

00:32:13.860 and no one should come to Australia 0.99

00:32:16.720 without an expectation of living

00:32:19.960 in an Anglo-Celtic culture with a Judeo-Christian ethos

00:32:23.860 and we've got to be crystal clear about that

00:32:26.100 yeah uh i mean canada doesn't have or didn't have quite the same issue with illegal migration

00:32:33.280 because uh the boat uh like how would you get to canada by flow it's a very long journey i mean

00:32:38.880 it's it's a bit further from uh afghanistan to canada by boat is a pretty big trip yeah it's

00:32:45.160 a little further than java to uh queen sorry what's the one christmas island okay java to 0.88

00:32:52.060 Christmas Island is about 200 miles.

00:32:54.320 Yeah, so it's a bit more of a jump.

00:32:57.680 So, you know, we've had some illegal migration,

00:33:00.380 but it's generally people who are being kicked out of the states

00:33:03.100 because they're illegal migrants there.

00:33:05.140 And then, you know, they trade us over the border.

00:33:06.680 They just declare MBG status,

00:33:08.360 and our bureaucracy is too overwhelmed to be able to process that.

00:33:11.940 But it's a relatively small number.

00:33:13.580 It's legal migration. 0.61

00:33:15.720 It was very high for a long time, even under Stephen Harper,

00:33:18.840 but it was a generally merit-based system.

00:33:21.180 had a bunch of family re-indication stuff

00:33:22.860 which is problematic because you'd bring

00:33:25.280 over older people who've never paid into the social system 0.93

00:33:27.340 and then they're on the healthcare system

00:33:28.920 but it was at least manageable

00:33:31.700 but then legal

00:33:33.260 migration like in Australia 1.00

00:33:35.480 has just peaked

00:33:37.060 far beyond any previous records

00:33:39.300 completely swamped things

00:33:41.060 same issues with housing

00:33:43.560 downward pressure on wages

00:33:45.080 but also now major

00:33:47.020 cultural conflict we're starting to see 0.84

00:33:49.120 because we're we used to be on a merit-based system we were attracting at least the upper

00:33:54.240 crust or upper mid-level crust of people in other countries uh which isn't very good for those

00:33:59.440 countries when we're sucking all the best away from them to begin with but uh we're not getting 0.65

00:34:04.020 just the best now and uh it's not it's just not very compatible uh in general and so it is

00:34:12.780 taking people like me who used to be pretty unabashedly pro reasonable levels of migration

00:34:18.600 And to the point where I think we need to pretty much seal the border for a decade with, yeah, we'll take your top engineers and doctors, we'll take like 5,000 people a year of the absolute cream of the crop.

00:34:29.820 We'll take refugee nuclear scientists from Iran or something, you know, where we've just got to almost stop migration for at least a period of a decade to digest it and catch up. 0.98

00:34:41.180 And Australia is facing a similar issue.

00:34:43.400 You're making very good points.

00:34:44.640 I mean, like Canada, Australia is an immigrant society, and the glory of Australia is that people have been able to come here from all over the world and make a wonderful living for themselves and for their kids.

00:34:59.000 but just at the moment as I said it's getting almost completely out of control

00:35:07.140 mostly because government has effectively subcontracted out immigration to educational

00:35:16.480 institutions that use overseas students as the cashed out have become part of their business 0.87

00:35:21.880 model, at the heart of their business model, and to, I think, slightly unscrupulous businesses

00:35:29.780 that would rather import people from overseas, allegedly on a short-term basis, than pay

00:35:38.720 locals what the locals would expect to do the relevant job, or to train up locals to

00:35:45.380 do the relevant job. So essentially, we've been bringing people in often to do relatively short

00:35:53.700 term English language courses, to work in menial jobs. Most of them are managing to stay one way

00:36:03.740 or another. I don't blame them for wanting to come to Australia. Who wouldn't? I don't blame

00:36:09.480 them for wanting to make a good life in Australia who shouldn't but at these numbers it's just not

00:36:17.480 fair to the Australians who are already here because of the impact on wages, the impact on

00:36:23.960 housing, the impact on infrastructure and yes the impact on social cohesion because at least some of

00:36:31.920 the recent migrant communities have tended to bring their troubles with them, to bring their, 1.00

00:36:39.660 if you like, prejudices with them. And I dare say many people in Canada noticed the

00:36:45.860 day of infamy, October the 9th, when you had a large and angry crowd gather outside the Sydney

00:36:53.080 Opera House screaming obscenities against Jewish people and shouting what sounded very much like

00:37:00.920 gas the Jews. Now, that was largely recent immigrants to our country. I guess you've 1.00

00:37:09.280 got an unholy alliance between recent immigrants from Muslim countries and the cultural Marxist 1.00

00:37:19.320 left which sees Israel as a settler colonialist obscenity and sees Jewish people as manifestations

00:37:32.960 of white privilege etc. So you've got this ugly alliance which has produced a real

00:37:40.440 outpouring of anti-Semitism or Jew hatred in our country which I think is

00:37:46.800 Well, it's sad, it's despicable, it's un-Australian, and it's been exacerbated by migration. 0.99

00:37:55.720 yeah and we've

00:37:57.580 seen it right across

00:37:58.660 the western world

00:38:00.680 it is just a bizarre

00:38:03.540 alliance where you've got people who are

00:38:05.480 practically medieval

00:38:07.260 barbarians

00:38:08.840 by

00:38:10.680 depending on how you're defining the political spectrum you could put

00:38:13.580 them as the furthest possible right

00:38:15.480 in some kind of way I guess

00:38:17.760 allied with cultural Marxists

00:38:21.580 but it's

00:38:23.180 yeah it's a whole other topic

00:38:25.640 Look, it's, I mean, what are we going to do here?

00:38:30.020 I mean, we've got to get back to common sense.

00:38:34.760 And a common sense view is that countries like Australia, Canada, Britain, America,

00:38:42.260 are the least racist, most colourblind countries on earth.

00:38:46.280 And yes, if you look back into our history, there was the British Empire, there was slavery,

00:38:52.540 there was Indigenous dispossession.

00:38:54.260 and other than slavery I think there's a lot to be I mean let's put slavery to one side

00:39:02.440 which was a dreadful blot on America but Indigenous people in Australia in the long 1.00

00:39:11.640 run are much better off thanks to British settlement yeah I presume the same as it's 1.00

00:39:16.880 very much the same we don't we don't like to admit it but it's true the British Empire yes

00:39:22.440 there were exploitative elements yes there was a degree of paternalism maybe even racism

00:39:28.900 but in the end the british empire has been good for the world parliamentary democracy the rule of

00:39:36.780 law respect for human rights all of these things were byproducts well even slavery it was the first

00:39:44.400 major power to end slavery the royal declare little war on it the royal navy spent the best 0.80

00:39:50.860 part of a century stamping out the transatlantic slave trade and thousands of british sailors

00:39:58.540 untold wealth was consumed in this essentially moral project to stamp out slavery i mean much

00:40:09.140 of the british empire in africa was a result of the flag following missionaries who were there

00:40:15.360 specifically to stamp out man's inhumanity to man,

00:40:19.480 of which slavery is the most obvious and gross manifestation.

00:40:24.980 So, honestly, we should be so proud of our record.

00:40:32.380 And Britain in particular, no country on earth has had more impact

00:40:38.620 on the modern world for good than Britain.

00:40:40.480 I mean, when you think of the mother of parliaments,

00:40:42.440 the industrial revolution the emancipation of minorities all that the world's common language

00:40:51.840 all originated in britain and yet there's this epidemic of self-doubt even self-loathing

00:40:59.520 across the anglosphere right now and it must end because in the end

00:41:05.860 national

00:41:07.840 self-loathing

00:41:09.340 is just as toxic as

00:41:11.640 personal self-loathing. I mean,

00:41:13.700 low self-esteem is

00:41:15.560 personally poisonous

00:41:17.580 and low national self-esteem

00:41:20.260 is no less

00:41:21.560 toxic. Civilization

00:41:23.960 doubt. I think it goes well beyond

00:41:25.720 the angle of fear. I think it's

00:41:27.280 Western civilization in general with

00:41:29.760 a few exceptions,

00:41:31.860 perhaps Poland, Hungary,

00:41:33.620 Sometimes Australia

00:41:36.860 Sometimes America

00:41:38.360 Or portions within them

00:41:40.040 And perhaps even France

00:41:42.160 Some of the French are still pretty damn proud 1.00

00:41:45.300 Of being French 1.00

00:41:46.080 But in general it's a problem that plagues

00:41:49.300 The Anglosphere

00:41:50.200 But also I think the West in general

00:41:52.880 It does plague the West in general

00:41:54.980 But it's most acute in the Anglosphere

00:41:57.180 And this is the paradox

00:41:58.440 The Anglosphere countries are the most successful

00:42:01.280 Countries and yet they're the most

00:42:03.620 plagued by by doubt and it's almost like it's success guilt that we're suffering from and we've

00:42:10.580 got to get we've got to get over this and the sooner the better you mentioned countries like

00:42:15.300 poland i think the reason why it's different and better in places like poland is because

00:42:23.140 in very recent times they've had existential struggles to deal with i mean the one western

00:42:29.300 country that still absolutely has a national project is Israel, because Israel is constantly 0.99

00:42:35.560 subject to existential threat. For a couple of generations now, we in the main Anglosphere

00:42:45.680 countries have not been subject to existential threat. We've had it very, very good. And this

00:42:53.960 is again one of the paradoxes of these times um well you're i think you're making the uh the good

00:42:59.900 times create weak men argument materially uh we've never been better off spiritually we've

00:43:08.040 rarely been worse off okay uh well i want to i think that transitions somewhat to uh i guess

00:43:19.920 what's just happening now with uh you know war breaking out between israel and iran potential

00:43:26.140 war uh you know so often we have exchanges of military assets we don't declare it an actual

00:43:31.500 war uh grossest example possibly being vietnam but you know what could certainly escalate into

00:43:37.340 a more conventional war here or we could have a special military operation special military

00:43:41.480 a war that's now lasted more than three years yeah yeah uh i'm not even sure iraq and afghanistan

00:43:47.460 were declared officially war.

00:43:49.060 There was a war on terror in general.

00:43:50.720 It was a war on an idea.

00:43:54.740 But we don't declare war on states anymore

00:43:56.700 for some reason.

00:43:58.100 But, you know,

00:43:59.480 so when I was speaking with folks

00:44:01.780 who were helping set up the interview here,

00:44:03.240 I said, well, here's the different areas

00:44:04.960 I want to talk about.

00:44:06.060 I said, potential war between Israel and Iran.

00:44:08.600 Well, that changed last,

00:44:10.860 yesterday evening when,

00:44:12.920 our time at least,

00:44:14.340 when Israel launched,

00:44:15.900 what it says are preemptive strikes

00:44:17.260 on Iranian nuclear

00:44:19.180 enrichment

00:44:21.140 facilities, research facilities,

00:44:23.160 decapitated much of

00:44:25.260 the general staff of

00:44:27.020 the Iranian military

00:44:28.580 complex.

00:44:32.000 It's

00:44:32.800 obviously got a

00:44:35.080 response from Iran. Iran's not 0.85

00:44:36.940 been particularly successful so far, but

00:44:39.300 it's been less than 24

00:44:41.220 hours. I'd be pretty shocked

00:44:43.320 if this does not escalate further.

00:44:47.260 The question, I guess, is open.

00:44:51.700 I'm pretty skeptical of, well, any country that says it's launching a preemptive strike.

00:44:58.040 And there is a role for preemptive strikes.

00:44:59.560 The Seven Days War that Israel launched, well, Israel launched a preemptive strike for the Seven Days War.

00:45:05.940 It very likely would have been either a loss or a near loss like Yom Kippur if they had not. 0.96

00:45:10.420 but they provided evidence post facto

00:45:13.260 that it was necessary that

00:45:15.220 its Arab neighbors were

00:45:17.420 preparing to launch an attack but they

00:45:19.320 provided that evidence

00:45:20.400 but you know we have

00:45:23.400 the example of the 2003 invasion of

00:45:25.420 Iraq by the United States and its allies 0.75

00:45:27.260 that turned out

00:45:29.560 to be if we're being charitable

00:45:30.880 incomplete intelligence

00:45:34.900 if we're being less charitable false

00:45:37.080 intelligence and we

00:45:39.200 certainly toppled a

00:45:41.100 brutal

00:45:43.180 dictatorship. 0.51

00:45:44.840 A murderous and 0.98

00:45:46.580 an evil regime. 0.67

00:45:48.220 Absolutely. But I mean,

00:45:50.340 the Middle East is a different region here

00:45:52.240 where it's difficult

00:45:53.580 to simply roll in.

00:45:56.660 Here's McDonald's and

00:45:58.520 car washes, cable TV

00:46:00.460 and democracy. It didn't take.

00:46:03.800 That's an

00:46:04.480 open argument. Would Iraq have just been better 1.00

00:46:06.360 living under the brutal dictator?

00:46:07.600 it's a difficult question to say

00:46:10.140 but

00:46:10.780 regardless of who it was overthrowing

00:46:13.540 it was based, the caustic belli of war

00:46:15.520 was false

00:46:16.360 and

00:46:17.480 I think it's incumbent upon Israel 1.00

00:46:21.520 to provide some pretty solid evidence for this

00:46:23.760 the Iranian regime

00:46:24.960 is arguably even

00:46:26.940 significantly worse than the regime

00:46:29.600 the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein

00:46:32.140 it's about as bad a regime

00:46:33.560 as it gets

00:46:34.500 but I think it's incumbent on

00:46:36.660 And is it not incumbent on Israel, though, to provide some real tangible evidence that there was an imminent threat of Iran acquiring, what they're saying, between 10 to 15 nuclear devices?

00:46:46.320 my understanding is that unlike iraq prior to 2003 there have been inspectors going into iran

00:46:58.800 in recent times and they are reporting the physical evidence of centrifuges and others

00:47:05.440 which are producing weapons grade material as far as i am aware that is simply incontrovertible

00:47:14.260 It's as realistic as the evidence of the Holocaust, for instance, 0.96

00:47:20.080 which some people will still deny.

00:47:22.480 That's my understanding.

00:47:24.840 And I think Israel has every right to take preemptive action 1.00

00:47:30.700 against a regime which has been threatening for decades

00:47:35.220 to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, 1.00

00:47:37.520 which has been the sponsor of numerous acts of terrorism against Israel

00:47:42.420 and which has been hell-bent on getting a nuclear weapon

00:47:47.140 for at least two or three decades.

00:47:49.660 I think this is as justified a strike as any can be.

00:47:55.260 Yes, let's expect Israel to produce appropriate evidence 0.90

00:48:03.980 of exactly what it's done.

00:48:05.860 let's hope that the strikes succeed in their objective and then end let's hope that there are

00:48:19.220 minimal civilian casualties and let's hope against hope that the Iranian people might 1.00

00:48:27.200 rise up against their oppressors and install a better regime let's dwell for a moment though

00:48:34.520 on the Iraq War, which has cast a shadow across the contemporary psyche

00:48:41.100 in the same way that the Vietnam War appeared to cast a shadow

00:48:44.300 across the psyche of Americans growing up in the 1960s.

00:48:49.840 Look, I was part of the Howard government,

00:48:53.020 which joined the Anglo-American assault on Iraq.

00:48:58.740 We all thought that there were weapons of mass destruction.

00:49:02.040 even the opponents of the war thought they were weapons of mass destruction

00:49:06.460 Saddam kept telling us that he had weapons of mass destruction

00:49:10.680 and he wanted to use them

00:49:12.220 we knew he'd used gas

00:49:14.040 on his own people

00:49:17.380 and I thought that was an eminently justified

00:49:21.200 assault to topple the regime

00:49:24.960 I still think it was eminently justified

00:49:28.340 the americans who were running the show made two cataclysmic and fundamental mistakes

00:49:37.520 they disbanded the iraqi army which meant there are half a million unemployed guys with guns

00:49:43.020 and they disbanded the barthes civil service which meant that no one knew how to run anything

00:49:48.880 and the country swiftly descended into anarchy we had a plan for the war we didn't have a plan

00:49:57.060 for the peace. The Americans, and regrettably the British and Australian governments went along

00:50:02.740 with this, the Americans had facilely assumed that windbags in exile, like that Shalabi guy, 0.98

00:50:12.680 had far more support than they really had. And in retrospect, the best thing would have been

00:50:21.340 to restore the Iraqi monarchy

00:50:23.180 because the only countries in the Middle East

00:50:27.520 that work are the monarchies.

00:50:30.500 That would have been very much in contradiction, though,

00:50:33.860 to kind of the neoconservative push at the time

00:50:37.400 of spreading democracy,

00:50:39.160 that we're going to plant the seeds of democracy

00:50:40.980 in the Middle East and it's going to flower.

00:50:42.860 Which is a nice ideal,

00:50:46.720 but but centuries of experience uh disproves it uh i mean democracy is a desirable

00:50:57.360 further state of development but you can't simply impose democracy it was like a heart transplant

00:51:06.720 on on what on what is effectively a medieval society i mean as i said the the the only

00:51:12.680 countries that really work in the middle east are the monarchies um democracy in the middle east

00:51:20.360 tends to be one man one vote once uh and it becomes a dictatorship and it's usually a much

00:51:27.240 worse dictatorship um than the monarchical regimes because the king wants his grandson to be

00:51:35.800 in the same position that he's in one day he's never going to completely alienate anyone

00:51:42.020 In practice, monarchies are negotiated societies rather than societies ruled by fear or force.

00:51:52.560 And unfortunately, America is still neuralgic about monarchy because of the experience of George III.

00:51:59.120 It's hard to imagine the American. I think you are right. 0.84

00:52:01.100 Because of the experience of George III.

00:52:02.080 But that would have been a weird to see the Americans do it. 0.68

00:52:04.020 But if they weren't prepared to come at a monarchy, which would have been the best outcome,

00:52:10.240 they should have found the least bad of Saddam's generals and said, mate, you're in charge

00:52:15.700 and we will back you on two conditions.

00:52:20.040 One, no genocide against your own people.

00:52:23.100 And two, no terrorism against ours.

00:52:26.200 But instead, yes, they tried.

00:52:29.440 It's the argument. 1.00

00:52:30.680 It's the arson of a bitch. 1.00

00:52:31.540 They tried to impose a quasi-Western democracy. 0.99

00:52:39.360 It's now got to, I think, a tolerably good position,

00:52:46.340 but it's taken two decades, the best part of two decades,

00:52:52.500 and in the process there's been a ferocious civil war

00:52:57.380 which has cost hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives.

00:53:01.540 thousands of Western lives, and it's spilled over into Syria, which is an ongoing

00:53:09.520 issue. So look, you're right, but just because things have had bad consequences

00:53:21.600 doesn't mean that they shouldn't have been done.

00:53:26.920 And I don't think, even with the wisdom of hindsight,

00:53:34.520 that overthrowing Saddam Hussein was a bad thing to do.

00:53:39.340 It's just that there should have been much more realistic planning

00:53:42.480 going to it.

00:53:45.680 I can see it.

00:53:47.100 I can see it.

00:53:48.060 I'm just not sure it was worth

00:53:50.360 you know, the human

00:53:52.520 the cost and blood and treasure to get

00:53:54.640 here, but I can see where

00:53:56.580 you're coming from. But

00:53:58.140 Iran is, I believe

00:54:00.540 two to three times the population

00:54:02.760 of Iraq. It's roughly

00:54:04.520 90 million people off the top of my mind

00:54:06.440 It's military, I think

00:54:08.520 with reserves, is at a million

00:54:09.920 This is a substantially

00:54:12.460 more powerful

00:54:13.440 power to

00:54:16.140 confront

00:54:17.180 like Iraq it's got a very divided population

00:54:20.500 less so ethnically

00:54:21.780 Iraq had the Sunni domination 0.85

00:54:23.580 the majority of Shiites

00:54:26.800 Iran is almost entirely Shiite

00:54:29.200 and has a few minorities

00:54:30.720 but not major components

00:54:32.560 the way Iraq has the Kurds 1.00

00:54:34.260 but it's divided between

00:54:35.760 a large minority of fairly liberal

00:54:39.080 westernized people

00:54:40.160 who tend to leave in large numbers

00:54:43.160 and then the more theocratic

00:54:46.560 religious

00:54:48.620 fundamentalist side

00:54:50.360 there does not seem to be a way to

00:54:53.400 outright

00:54:54.020 march in and liberate it

00:54:56.860 Iraq style here

00:54:58.560 sort of an utterly cataclysmic war

00:55:00.880 and I know that's not what you're advocating

00:55:02.220 my concern though is that

00:55:05.020 if they were on the verge of a bomb

00:55:08.960 I think Israel was totally justified 1.00

00:55:10.920 that's the big question mark for me

00:55:13.320 right now

00:55:13.740 If they were imminently on the verge of a bomb, well, then Israel really had no choice. 0.60

00:55:21.040 They had to do what they did.

00:55:22.620 If they were not, though, or Israel does not provide sufficiently convincing evidence of that,

00:55:29.080 my concern is then that they have potentially just ignited a major regional war that could pull the Western powers in.

00:55:39.700 Well, that's all possible.

00:55:41.960 And, of course, Iran has always denied that its nuclear program was for military purposes, but it's always insisted that it did have a very active nuclear program, supposedly for peaceful purposes.

00:55:58.900 And I don't think it's realistic to equate the Saddam situation in 2003 and weapons of mass destruction with the current Iranian situation. 0.52

00:56:15.200 Why not?

00:56:16.100 Well, because IEA inspectors have been in Iran and they've brought back reports of what they have seen with their own eyes.

00:56:26.480 Now, as I said, the Iranians have always denied that this is for military purposes, but you do not need highly enriched uranium for anything other than military purposes.

00:56:40.520 And it's clear, it's as clear as anything can be, that they were increasingly advancing towards highly enriched uranium.

00:56:51.600 And look, all Israel wants to do, I mean, there are lots of things Israel would like.

00:56:58.720 I mean, Israel would like a friendly regime in Tehran.

00:57:03.880 Israel would like the kind of relationship with Tehran that it has with the Emirates, for instance.

00:57:10.520 But all Israel is actually doing is trying to stop Iran's nuclear program from further progressing.

00:57:20.240 and i think that's a perfectly reasonable objective and let me also say this derek

00:57:27.920 there's been no condemnation of these israeli strikes thus far from the saudis from the

00:57:33.280 emiratis from the jordanians because well none of these guys like the iranians these guys are

00:57:38.960 look they all they are all in in in fear in existential fear of the apocalyptic ayatollahs 0.98

00:57:48.480 of Tehran. And I tell you this, Derek, if Iran did get a nuclear weapon, within months,

00:57:58.260 the Saudis would be buying one off the Pakistanis. Turkey would be buying one off the Pakistanis.

00:58:05.680 I mean, the whole global security arrangements and architecture would be radically deranged.

00:58:14.320 So, look, provided it's been successful and provided it doesn't substantially escalate, I think the Israelis have done us all a favor.

00:58:25.500 But those are two still big questions.

00:58:27.180 Was it successful?

00:58:28.240 There are no certainties in this life.

00:58:31.120 But sometimes it's just got to be brave.

00:58:34.200 And was it justified?

00:58:35.080 Were they on the imminent threat of it?

00:58:36.620 I mean, there have been reports that Iran was on the verge of a bomb for 30 years now.

00:58:41.020 That doesn't mean they wouldn't actually eventually get there.

00:58:43.120 but it means I'm

00:58:44.300 I want to see the proof

00:58:47.500 I think you're like Thomas

00:58:50.320 in the Gospels

00:58:52.320 all right

00:58:55.840 well I certainly can be convinced

00:58:57.860 well let's maybe

00:59:00.740 wrap it with a discussion

00:59:03.120 of the G7

00:59:04.160 I mean fortuitous time that you're here

00:59:06.240 it's Friday right now

00:59:08.920 on Sunday

00:59:09.800 just west of where we're sitting

00:59:13.000 right now, we're in downtown Calgary

00:59:15.060 just west of us in Kananaskis

00:59:16.820 close to where I live

00:59:18.380 the leaders of the G7

00:59:21.000 are going to be meeting

00:59:22.360 I mean, Iran 0.72

00:59:25.140 is obviously, I don't know how

00:59:26.940 high on the agenda it was going to be before

00:59:28.780 but it's going to be probably pretty top now

00:59:31.320 anything big

00:59:34.340 I mean, every time Trump's at the table

00:59:36.900 it's so hard to predict anything

00:59:38.840 that's going to take place, you know, even as big

00:59:40.940 as supporters will admit it's

00:59:42.480 i i i can't imagine who actually has to take care of planning this guy's agenda every day

00:59:48.220 it's kind of the chaos um it's but a particular particularly at this moment where carney actually

00:59:55.880 has him i think in large measure to thank for being in the prime minister's chair with his

01:00:00.160 talk of 51st state the trade war that took place um but at the same time he's got to be

01:00:06.480 really nervous about what trump might do because um well there's a lot of similarities between

01:00:11.740 canada and australia i think one of the big differences is there's no major secessionist

01:00:15.420 movements in australia i don't know where they would really want to go um you know but in addition

01:00:20.380 to quebec it's now very very real in alberta here uh we have a citizens initiative law uh that's been

01:00:26.300 amended here and it is near certainty we're going to be having a referendum on independence here in

01:00:31.020 alberta potentially even saskatchewan soon after uh on independence uh no one really in either

01:00:38.300 Alberta or Saskatchewan talks about joining United States. It's not really something most people are

01:00:41.900 interested in. But Trump could look at this as a kind of power play for closer union with at least

01:00:50.860 Alberta and Saskatchewan. What do you, I don't know, do you know the man and do you,

01:00:57.580 what opportunities for mischief do you see there where he's going to be literally be

01:01:01.980 and sell in Alberta kind of the heart of the movement of the independence movement in Alberta

01:01:06.300 at a time where he's been just dropping bombs on Canadian domestic politics?

01:01:12.920 Well, I think that there's two Trumps, effectively.

01:01:16.720 There's domestic Trump, who's largely a positive force,

01:01:21.500 and there's foreign Trump, who has often been a negative force.

01:01:25.580 And most obviously, foreign Trump has been a negative force 0.89

01:01:28.920 via his stream of insults against Canada,

01:01:32.820 which I think were a key factor in the defeat of the Conservative Party here.

01:01:40.800 Look, you're right.

01:01:44.840 Any event involving President Trump invariably becomes the centre of attention.

01:01:56.580 He loves that.

01:01:58.220 He loves keeping everyone off balance.

01:02:02.820 and uncertain as to his next move.

01:02:08.140 I think, frankly, the best thing for anyone to do

01:02:12.240 in responding to Trump is just keep calm and carry on.

01:02:18.020 Keep calm and carry on.

01:02:20.680 And I think that Trump's tariffs on Canada,

01:02:25.660 in the end, are going to hurt America,

01:02:27.160 at least as much as they hurt Canada.

01:02:29.060 and I think over time they're going to get rethought.

01:02:33.540 I think the risk in America at the moment is a recession

01:02:36.820 brought on by the uncertain investment climate

01:02:41.380 and the price hikes that the tariffs inevitably will bring with them.

01:02:48.620 And if Trump wants to secure his legacy,

01:02:53.200 he's actually got to produce economic success, not economic chaos.

01:02:58.860 and at the moment it's been much more the latter than the former.

01:03:04.440 So what's going to come out of the G7?

01:03:07.220 Well, they will obviously talk a lot about Iran

01:03:10.720 and they will note that urge both sides to de-escalate,

01:03:15.160 which is fair enough, as long as Israel's objective 0.96

01:03:18.740 of preventing an Iranian bomb has succeeded.

01:03:24.480 I hope that for the first time in years,

01:03:28.860 The G7 might actually talk more about energy security and less about emissions.

01:03:37.220 And if that happens and we've got Drill Baby Drill Trump coming together with a Kearney who at least says he wants to see resource development.

01:03:49.060 so let's hope that we get

01:03:51.720 at least more

01:03:53.760 common sense on energy

01:03:55.640 out of this G7

01:03:57.080 than we have out of recent ones

01:03:59.500 this final question

01:04:01.340 have you seen the movie on the emu war

01:04:03.280 I haven't

01:04:04.440 I haven't seen it yet either

01:04:07.040 the emu war

01:04:08.980 when your country fought a war against

01:04:11.700 emus, birds

01:04:12.500 and lost

01:04:14.140 I nearly has only lost one war

01:04:17.520 and it was against birds

01:04:18.300 Now that you mention it, there was a campaign, I think, in Western Australia in the 1930s to eradicate emus.

01:04:30.520 It was a special military operation.

01:04:32.520 It was a misguided campaign.

01:04:35.700 I think very few people were aware it was happening at the time, and they quickly worked out that it was a failure.

01:04:42.240 i think i think the i think the emu wars might ultimately be a bit of a piss take

01:04:50.920 uh my favorite thing whenever when i meet australian most australians don't seem to

01:04:55.920 know about it i if i bring this up i make take out their phone in google emu war and

01:05:00.700 there's a wikipedia article and it literally is structured like regular wars like world war ii

01:05:05.720 has like the belligerents on one side with casualties listed uh i mean it was kind of

01:05:11.200 like vietnam you beat the emus on the casualty account but ultimately it was unsuccessful

01:05:16.140 there we are well that's fun that's one more i'm glad to be lost all right uh tony abbott uh i've

01:05:24.140 taken you way longer than was expected here uh but i really appreciate your time it's uh fascinating

01:05:29.300 and uh i hope you enjoy your time here in alberta thanks jerry good on you thank you

01:05:33.640 all right that's tony abbott the former prime minister of australia uh joining us for a wide

01:05:40.000 Raging Talk. Thank you for your time. Remember to go to westernstandard.news, click on subscribe.

01:05:44.780 It's only $10 a month or $100 a year to get unlimited access to all Western Standard content.

01:05:49.760 Thank you for joining us today, and God bless.

01:06:10.000 Thank you.

Western Standard - June 17, 2025

Energy politics, immigration, and the crisis of the West

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