Western Standard

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

00:00:27.640 I'm joined today by a very special guest, Tony Abbott.

00:00:31.400 He is the former Prime Minister of Australia.

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

00:00:40.120 and as Prime Minister from 2013 to 2015 as the leader of the Liberal Party.

00:00:49.300 Welcome, Mr. Abbott.

00:00:50.940 I know what you're going to say. You're going to clarify what liberal means.

00:00:53.860 Yes. In Australia, the Liberal Party is a conservative party, broadly.

00:01:00.940 Certainly, we are the most conservative mainstream political party in Australia.

00:01:05.120 Well, you've got the nationals.

00:01:06.300 Well, the nationals and the liberals are traditionally in coalition.

00:01:09.340 And I used to say that a national is a country liberal, and a liberal is a city national.

00:01:17.060 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.

00:01:25.600 And the Liberal National Coalition in Australia is the equivalent of the Conservative Party here in Catter.

00:01:31.680 And if I may say so, for the benefit of your listeners who aren't familiar with Australian politics,

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

00:01:40.980 First, we stopped a wave of illegal migration by boat.

00:01:46.540 We're the only Western government in recent times to have done that.

00:01:50.360 And second, we repealed a carbon tax.

00:01:53.720 And that's pretty rare as well.

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

00:01:57.120 A government that genuinely repeals a carbon tax doesn't just pretend to repeal a carbon tax

00:02:03.340 while leaving the worst carbon tax in place.

00:02:08.160 We had to give them that rightness there,

00:02:10.080 because any conversation I've ever had with an Australian about politics

00:02:13.680 immediately begins with explaining that the liberals are not liberals as we would see it.

00:02:18.500 I think maybe a holdover from when the Liberal Party is coming from the British Commonwealth

00:02:23.140 were classical Liberal Parties, which they no longer, they're now Social Democratic Parties.

00:02:28.260 Well, we had much the same development in Australia in the late 19th century.

00:02:32.020 You had New South Wales Liberalism, which tended to be free trade liberalism,

00:02:37.680 and you had Victorian Liberalism, which tended to be big government liberalism.

00:02:43.320 And, of course, in Australia, liberalism has developed more in a free market way,

00:02:52.200 whereas in North America, liberalism has developed very much into a big government movement.

00:02:58.720 Look, I suppose if you go back to the roots of liberalism, it's about human flourishing.

00:03:05.300 And some of us think that humans flourish best when most free.

00:03:11.700 Others think that humans flourish best when most helped, typically by government.

00:03:17.060 And I guess, you know, this is one of those arguments which waxes and wanes,

00:03:22.760 and it develops differently in different places.

00:03:25.040 But it is, I guess, one of those things that we humans will never get beyond.

00:03:31.240 And our disputes on issues like this, where often enough, there's something to be said for either side.

00:03:39.840 Yeah, I suppose I would probably understand the political nomenclature a bit more than most people from Canada,

00:03:45.000 because I know a few hardline libertarians here who still call themselves liberals.

00:03:49.160 They're like, I'm not giving up the term.

00:03:51.020 I think it's a pretty dying battle in North America, but I get it.

00:03:55.280 Also, I actually used to play footy.

00:03:57.620 Rugby union?

00:03:58.640 No, footy.

00:03:59.520 Australian rules football, Aussie rules in Canada.

00:04:01.640 I played in the Ontario League and very, very briefly in the Alberta League.

00:04:05.140 Wow.

00:04:06.100 Didn't, I never knew that Aussie rules was played.

00:04:08.840 It's not very big.

00:04:10.060 No.

00:04:10.380 Very big.

00:04:11.060 But.

00:04:11.800 I might have been a champion Aussie rules player if I came to Canada.

00:04:15.240 Oh, you would have been.

00:04:16.180 The Australian.

00:04:16.800 Because I was a hopeless Aussie rules player in Australia.

00:04:18.880 There were guys who were, you know, just all the Australians were always stars on the team.

00:04:23.680 And they, you know, over a couple of years, they admit they probably were not very good there.

00:04:27.780 But I've probably played half a dozen hockey games.

00:04:30.600 Not even that in my life.

00:04:31.780 But if I went to Australia, I'm sure I'd be a superstar.

00:04:34.340 Just because I theoretically know how to skate.

00:04:36.700 If you could fight an ice hockey rig in Australia, you'd do bloody well.

00:04:39.740 Yeah.

00:04:40.400 Yeah, exactly.

00:04:40.900 Okay, so I'm going to talk about your political career and, you know, how there might be parallels

00:04:49.520 or lessons for what's happening and what has just taken place in Canada.

00:04:54.860 You served as the leader of the opposition from 2009 to 2013.

00:04:59.460 You formed government 2013.

00:05:01.080 You know, you're, I think you're aware, you know, Pierre Pauly has been the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada here.

00:05:09.680 And he was a very different kind of leader than we've had for some time.

00:05:14.020 You know, he was certainly more bellicose and populist than, say, Stephen Harper was.

00:05:19.820 He probably had a more finely honed Conservative platform than, say, Andrew Scheer.

00:05:27.680 And certainly a hell of a lot more Conservative than we had with Aaron O'Toole, the previous Conservative leader.

00:05:33.760 He was widely, widely expected to win a mega, sweeping, supermajority government.

00:05:41.720 And until the Liberals swapped out Trudeau with Carney, and then to the surprise of pretty much everybody,

00:05:48.800 the Liberals came with a hair of winning majority.

00:05:51.280 Pauly did not even win his own seat.

00:05:52.780 He's now running the by-election here in Alberta in a very safe Conservative seat.

00:05:57.900 Do you see any parallels between your time in opposition and Pierre Pauly?

00:06:02.800 And, you know, and if so, what was the, maybe the inflection point where your career has diverged,

00:06:09.520 where you failed to win the election, but you did win in 2013?

00:06:14.520 Well, it's far too soon to write Pierre off because he's going to come back into the Parliament, we hope,

00:06:20.980 and almost certainly will be the leader of the opposition.

00:06:24.320 And while, yes, the election result was a dreadful disappointment for the Conservatives,

00:06:31.260 the Liberals certainly didn't have a smashing win either.

00:06:35.280 They just scraped back.

00:06:37.320 Look, the fundamental point to make is that no election is unlosable.

00:06:43.140 No election is unwinnable.

00:06:45.040 Every election turns very much on the circumstances of the time.

00:06:49.000 And two significant circumstances changed between late last year when the Conservatives were 20 points up in the polls

00:06:57.340 and the actual election date.

00:06:59.460 First of all, the Liberals swapped out unpopular Trudeau for a kind of fresh face, at least in a local context.

00:07:10.300 And second, Donald Trump took office in the United States and immediately waged what looked like a tariff war against Canada.

00:07:18.300 And New Zealand was not threatening to annex Australia.

00:07:20.360 No, Australia was not threatening to annex New Zealand.

00:07:23.440 So, look, when people feel that their country is under serious threat, they tend to rally around the flag

00:07:34.580 and they tend to rally behind the government of the day.

00:07:40.380 So I think Carney benefited on two counts.

00:07:43.900 First, he was a fresh face and people wanted to give him a chance, a fair go.

00:07:50.420 And second, he looked like he was standing up for Canada against the bully in Washington.

00:07:57.620 So I think that largely explains the loss of the election.

00:08:04.260 Nevertheless, I've got to say that as an Anglosphere Conservative, it disappoints me greatly that there is not a strong,

00:08:17.820 tough-minded Conservative government here in Canada.

00:08:20.880 And I think that's what Pierre would have led, a tough-minded Conservative government that made big changes to the energy madness,

00:08:33.400 wanted Canada to take advantage of its natural advantages in fossil fuel,

00:08:39.020 didn't want to impose unnecessary costs on people through all of these various carbon taxes and other measures.

00:08:47.300 And I think he also would have been a very proud Canadian who didn't allow the constant dilution, if you like, of core Canada,

00:09:00.260 which is almost inevitable when you've got sustained record immigration.

00:09:07.620 And I think on these two critical topics, Pierre would have run a very different and very much better government than we're likely to get under Mark Carney.

00:09:18.000 So I want to come to immigration, but first I want to touch on carbon tax.

00:09:22.380 You've already mentioned it here.

00:09:24.720 You repealed your carbon tax, sometimes between 2013, 2015, while you're prime minister.

00:09:31.540 At that time, I mean, carbon tax hadn't even yet become so-called popular in Canada.

00:09:39.840 We had them, we had one in British Columbia, and it was, at least for some time, actually revenue neutral.

00:09:46.640 But they never stayed revenue neutral, it became a revenue collector.

00:09:50.400 And then we had the imposition of Alberta carbon tax, and then a federal carbon tax on top.

00:09:54.280 So, you know, Trudeau came to power in 2015, not campaigning on a carbon tax, but he just ended up doing one anyway.

00:10:01.720 And then people accepted it.

00:10:02.900 Canadians are often like that.

00:10:04.260 They'll accept a policy imposed without a mandate, because once it's there and the sky doesn't fall, they just go with it.

00:10:10.940 And it built such a consensus in the media and the Laurentian expert classes that by the 2021 election federally, even the Conservative Party of Canada, under Aaron O'Toole, was running on a carbon tax itself.

00:10:26.600 One that was actually even worse and more interventionist than the liberal one.

00:10:30.020 But, yeah, between 2021 and now, the consensus radically changed to the point where Mark Carney repealed at least the consumer portion of the federal carbon tax.

00:10:41.680 The industrial portion is still there, and it could get worse.

00:10:45.100 But you repealed it at a time when, globally, these were very much in vogue at all the major international conferences.

00:10:52.360 They touted it as the cure-all.

00:10:53.760 Well, how did you – and Australia is not known as a major fossil fuel producer.

00:11:01.820 We are.

00:11:02.680 We're the world's biggest coal exporter.

00:11:05.460 Sorry, I'm looking for coal.

00:11:06.880 Until recently, we were the world's biggest gas exporter as well.

00:11:13.200 We rivaled Qatar. 0.93

00:11:15.380 Okay, well, maybe you are.

00:11:16.280 I'm just not known for it, at least.

00:11:18.600 Shame on me again for maybe not knowing it.

00:11:20.540 But, I mean, but it plays less of a role as a proportion of its economy than in an Alberta, certainly.

00:11:27.780 Our three biggest exports are iron ore, coal, and gas.

00:11:33.480 So fossil fuels, one way or another, are incredibly important to Australia.

00:11:38.560 Not lamb?

00:11:39.060 I can't buy lamb, but it's not from you or not from New Zealand. 0.82

00:11:41.440 Our agricultural exports are, I think, if you add up all of our different agricultural exports, our beef, our sheep, our wheat, our wine, that all of them together would not be more than maybe a third or a half of our coal exports in value.

00:12:03.220 Okay.

00:12:04.660 So, but you took on the carbon tax, just as it was becoming very popular globally, particularly in the West, where you're really the only places that oppose these things.

00:12:16.580 How did you build a coalition against it when you're really swimming against the tide, before the kind of global tide had turned against these things?

00:12:24.360 Global warming, climate change hysteria is reaching its peak.

00:12:28.760 That's a difficult time to take on that issue.

00:12:33.260 Was there a political cost to be paid for it?

00:12:36.700 Or was it a political winner?

00:12:38.560 Well, Derek, if climate change is approached as a moral issue, the left wins.

00:12:45.580 If climate change is approached as an economic issue, the right wins.

00:12:50.940 And what I said to people was, look, of course, we have got to respect the planet.

00:12:57.180 We only have one.

00:12:59.180 And yes, I accept that climate does change, that mankind does make a difference and that we should do what we can to reduce emissions.

00:13:10.780 But I would always add this critical rider, but not if it costs you your job, costs us, our industries and puts up your cost of living.

00:13:23.040 So I said that, sure, let's do what we can to reduce emissions, but let's not do it by making a great big tax on everything, which is what an emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax is.

00:13:37.340 It's a great big tax on everything.

00:13:39.980 And when I finally abolished the carbon tax about nine months into my government, it was the one and only time in the last two decades that there was a substantial fall in electricity prices.

00:13:55.180 They fell by well over 10% in a quarter because the carbon tax was making such a difference.

00:14:01.880 So what you've got to do to win this argument, because people will often tell you that the so-called science is settled.

00:14:12.920 Now, I don't think that's true.

00:14:15.900 Any time you say it's settled, it's very unscientific.

00:14:18.620 But nevertheless, it's hard to win an argument on so-called climate science, but you can very readily win an argument on the impact of climate policy if the impact of climate policy is to destroy your job and to put your cost of living through the roof.

00:14:40.020 And every time there has been an election in Australia where the centre-right fought hard on this issue against the centre-left's climate cultism, the centre-right has done well.

00:14:56.320 In 2010, in 2013 and in 2019, we in the Australian Liberal National Coalition fought hard on climate and energy, saying that we are not going to do anything that is going to badly damage our economy.

00:15:13.060 And in all three of those elections, we did much better than expected and we had a smashing victory in 2013.

00:15:20.920 So, look, politics is always about a contest.

00:15:24.600 If you aren't prepared to create a contest on policy, it becomes a beauty contest. 0.81

00:15:33.200 And what's the point of being in a beauty contest, particularly when politics is show business for ugly people? 1.00

00:15:40.140 So, you've got to create a policy contest.

00:15:43.280 And I think the most important immediate policy contest is energy,

00:15:51.420 where this climate-driven mania for renewables is a form of economic self-harm.

00:16:01.580 I'd put it even stronger than that.

00:16:03.700 In countries like Australia, we are on the verge of committing a form of economic suicide by moving rapidly away from reliable 24-7 fossil fuels to intermittent renewable power,

00:16:17.920 because while batteries and solar panels can run a house, they cannot run a modern industrial economy.

00:16:25.500 And yet, that's what we're trying to do in Australia, and it's insane.

00:16:30.100 Well, that's a great segue to where I want to go with, you know, there's few countries in the world that are as similar as Canada and Australia.

00:16:41.160 Roughly similar geographic size, vast tracts of our country is, for all intents and purposes, not practically habitable for area of the land and whatnot.

00:16:52.440 So, we have, you know, thin strips of population and huge tracts of wilderness.

00:16:58.220 Wilderness.

00:16:58.960 Yeah.

00:16:59.360 That's the way we put it politely, I guess, in both countries.

00:17:02.580 You know, we're English-speaking Westminster democracies.

00:17:06.580 Federations under the crown.

00:17:07.920 Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest difference in our political systems is that you have a rational Senate of some kind.

00:17:15.140 We have an elected Senate as opposed to a kind of a House of Lords type Senate.

00:17:19.400 Ours is even worse than the House of Lords, because it's not even based on if your parents did something, your great-grandparents did something of note.

00:17:25.480 Ours is just, did you donate the right amount to the Liberal Party?

00:17:27.940 And it's a very powerful Senate, unlike the House of Lords in Britain, which can delay, but it can't deny.

00:17:34.440 But overall, but even the shapes of our economies are very similar.

00:17:40.880 Heavy in primary resource extraction and agriculture, export-focused.

00:17:46.800 I mean, as an island, you're by necessity export-focused, but we're export-focused.

00:17:52.000 You know, we've been struggling.

00:17:57.920 Probably one of the defining issues in Canadian politics over at least the last 15 years has been resource extraction versus climate change, hardline environmental protection.

00:18:11.380 And the debate appears to be swinging more back in favor of resource development, wealth creation right now, away from kind of radical green ideology, at least rhetorically.

00:18:25.800 The government, the new federal government here is rhetorically more, at least less implacably anti-resource development.

00:18:33.260 But it's still far too early to see how it's going to manifest itself.

00:18:39.680 You know, we have, actually, it's a major Australian project just south of here in the Crowsnest Pass in the Rocky Mountains.

00:18:48.240 I think it's a metallurgical coal project.

00:18:51.700 And there's, you know, the opposition to it is actually not even from the locals.

00:18:58.500 They had a referendum there.

00:18:59.880 It was something like 70-odd percent supported it.

00:19:01.980 But then you've got folks in cities who actually don't live anywhere near this kind of thing who are up in arms saying, oh, this is going to destroy everything.

00:19:09.980 As is often the case, you know, it's not actually the locals.

00:19:12.840 It's city dwellers.

00:19:13.980 But, you know, what are some of the Australian lessons in building consensus around...

00:19:20.040 You also have, you know, Indigenous issues that you face similar to us.

00:19:24.460 It's another one of the major parallels, especially as it develops our economy and resource development.

00:19:29.120 What were some of the major challenges you faced that Canada also faces and perhaps some of the lessons that we can take from the successes you have?

00:19:37.600 Well, Derek, I think that all of the Anglosphere countries face similar problems today.

00:19:45.240 So, depending upon the government of the day, they deal with them differently.

00:19:50.660 But I think all the major Anglosphere countries have the problem of economic stagnation, a problem of social fracturing and a problem of strategic peril.

00:20:02.420 I think all of us are in a similar boat.

00:20:07.880 And I think that at the heart of the economic stagnation is the politics of climate.

00:20:17.140 And I think at the heart of the social fracturing is identity politics.

00:20:22.920 So, I think we've got to tackle both the politics of climate and identity politics head on as serious centre-right politicians and political movements.

00:20:36.420 And, look, as I said earlier, if you approach climate as a moral issue, you're on hiding for nothing.

00:20:46.480 Because if the climate really is changing and we really do have to reduce emissions to zero as quickly as possible or die, yes, there's an imperative.

00:20:58.340 If the climate is changing, I don't think it's changing that fast.

00:21:05.800 And to the extent that it's changing, I think it's far from clear that human beings are the key factor.

00:21:12.740 I mean, one of the challenges I always put to the climate alarmists is, how do you explain the ice ages?

00:21:18.600 Because it was a very different climate then.

00:21:21.240 And obviously, human beings had nothing to do with it.

00:21:23.640 I think it's far more likely that the biggest impacts on climate are less atmospheric carbon dioxide and sunspot activity and oscillations in the orbit of the Earth around the sun.

00:21:36.980 I mean, it stands to reason that the biggest impact on the Earth's climate is the sun.

00:21:42.500 So, you'd think that changes there would be what matter most.

00:21:46.980 But let's put the so-called science of climate change aside for a second and look at the economics of it.

00:21:55.520 If you try to eliminate fossil fuels, not only do you make your energy far more expensive and far less reliable, but you're also in peril just about every aspect of daily life.

00:22:11.380 I mean, look around this room.

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

00:22:20.880 All of these are critically dependent on fossil fuels.

00:22:25.160 I mean, fossil fuels are the feedstock, not just of our power system, but of just about all the things we take for granted in modern life.

00:22:36.200 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.

00:22:54.120 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.

00:23:20.640 And if we drive fossil fuels out of our economy, we are making modern life almost impossible.

00:23:29.260 I just think we've got to, I mean, I suppose if you're living in the city, you might think that water comes out of a tap as opposed to a dam.

00:23:38.600 You might think that milk comes in a bottle as opposed to out of a cow.

00:23:43.320 All this stuff comes out of fossil fuels, and we've just got to understand that.

00:23:51.240 Okay, I want to switch gears to immigration, kind of tangentially touch on it a little bit so far.

00:23:58.440 You know, wealthy countries are magnets for migration, legal and illegal.

00:24:06.040 There's been a huge shift in public opinion in Canada pretty recently where we've generally always been, it's been verboten to even talk about having even a mid-level of arrivals.

00:24:26.520 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 it.

00:24:38.620 It's been one of the major contributing factors to the housing crisis, cost of living crisis.

00:24:45.620 You know, we're not just taking the cream of the crop from other countries now.

00:24:49.360 We're, in some ways, we're scraping the barrel.

00:24:52.420 We're getting people who are not good candidates to become members of Western civilization.

00:24:59.620 But that's a very recent transformation of public opinion in Canada where anyone who even, if you even mentioned it in any context other than more,

00:25:09.060 you were called a racist, a xenophobe, bigot.

00:25:12.000 Now even the liberals are backing away from what they've done. 0.95

00:25:14.840 And, yeah, the conservatives will raise questions about how the liberals are coming along on their targets, and they'll say, well, you're a racist.

00:25:21.100 And, you know, so some of their rhetoric hasn't changed.

00:25:23.580 But, you know, you cracked down on a lot of illegal migration, which by necessity has to, you know, walk across the border into Australia.

00:25:33.940 What kind of political pushback did you get for that?

00:25:36.580 Because that was at a time, actually, it would have been just at the time when the migration consensus in Europe was just changing.

00:25:46.720 Angela Merkel had just bullied her EU partners into throwing open the gates and allowing tons of so-called refugees, 1.00

00:25:55.420 many of which were not legitimate refugees, just to pour into Germany and to pour into the rest of Europe,

00:26:00.200 straining social services, straining housing, and obviously creating major, major cultural issues as well.

00:26:09.340 But you were kind of at the tip of the spear there before there had been a, I don't know, what kind of,

00:26:14.520 were Australians already on that page?

00:26:16.700 Or were you kind of going against the grain by cracking down on migration at that time?

00:26:21.640 Well, what I cracked down on was illegal migration by boat.

00:26:27.180 And the problem with illegal migration by boat is, A, it's illegal, but B, it's also very dangerous because you get a lot of people drowning at sea.

00:26:38.980 So by stopping it, you are actually being a humanitarian.

00:26:42.840 We'd had a wave of illegal migration by boat in the late 1990s, which was effectively stopped by the Howard government.

00:26:53.500 There was a change of government in 2007.

00:26:56.960 And the incoming Labor government reversed the Howard government policies, which had stopped the boats.

00:27:04.380 And naturally enough, the boats started up again.

00:27:06.940 And in the six years of the Labor government, a trickle of illegal migrant boats ultimately became a flood.

00:27:17.300 And I said in opposition that we would stop the boats.

00:27:23.740 I said we would do it by any and all means in our power, including turning boats around and sending them back to Java, 1.00

00:27:33.960 which is where 99% of them were coming from.

00:27:37.920 And the response of the then Labor government was to say, A, it's immoral, B, it's illegal,

00:27:44.820 and C, it would cause tension, perhaps even conflict with Indonesia.

00:27:50.900 And I said, well, I'm sorry.

00:27:53.840 A country which loses control of its borders has ultimately lost control of its sovereignty.

00:27:59.300 It's ultimately subject to a peaceful invasion, and no self-respecting country can put up with that.

00:28:06.420 So when I was elected in 2013, I said that we were implementing these strong border protection policies.

00:28:18.740 At one stage, I was told that we'd had advice that this was against international law.

00:28:24.500 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.

00:28:34.800 And what we called Operation Sovereign Borders essentially involved stopping these illegal boats on the high seas.

00:28:45.820 And instead of bringing them to Australia, which is what had happened under the previous government,

00:28:51.120 we would send them back to Indonesia. 1.00

00:28:55.500 Now, the people's smokeless were smart, so they soon worked out that when an Australian naval or customs vessel

00:29:03.460 hove into view, they would scuttle their ships.

00:29:06.640 And our sailors, being decent human beings, would pick them up.

00:29:11.840 They'd let them drown, yeah.

00:29:12.560 Pick them up.

00:29:14.720 The expectation was we'd then take them to Australia.

00:29:18.640 Well, no, we had a different plan.

00:29:21.220 We'd put them in a mothership, kept them at sea, and then on a suitably calm night,

00:29:29.080 would put them into unsinkable orange life rafts, take them to within a mile or two of Indonesian territorial waters

00:29:37.300 with just enough fuel to get back to Indonesia.

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

00:29:42.840 And that's what happened.

00:29:44.200 So look, you know, within maybe three or four months of coming into office,

00:29:50.600 the illegal boats completely stopped.

00:29:53.820 And from early 2014 until, I think, 2022, when the government changed,

00:30:02.460 there wasn't a single illegal boat.

00:30:05.200 We've had a few illegal boats since then, not very many,

00:30:10.020 because the new Labor government, to its credit,

00:30:14.700 having been ferociously opposed to our policies when we put them forward

00:30:19.180 and when we implemented them, they reluctantly conceded that that actually worked.

00:30:25.700 And while I think there would be some pressure inside the Green Left

00:30:30.240 to go back to what are effectively open borders,

00:30:33.760 the more sensible people in the current government know that this would be political suicide.

00:30:39.780 And so any illegal boats that have made it to Australia,

00:30:44.940 the occupants have swiftly been deported.

00:30:49.180 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.

00:31:01.200 And over the last decade, legal migration has gone up from about 200,000 a year

00:31:08.920 to about a half a million a year.

00:31:11.420 Even at 200,000 a year, it was far too high.

00:31:14.480 At half a million a year, it's just putting massive downward pressure on wages,

00:31:22.340 massive upward pressure on housing costs,

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

00:31:30.200 And yes, there are also integration issues with some of the people who are coming.

00:31:38.580 And I think what we need to do is first, radically scale back the numbers.

00:31:45.380 And second, be much more insistent with all of our migrants that if they're coming to Australia,

00:31:52.660 they've got to join Team Australia.

00:31:55.340 They can't simply live in Hotel Australia.

00:31:59.040 Australia has flourished as a country with a predominantly Anglo-Celtic culture

00:32:04.620 and a country with an overwhelmingly Judeo-Christian ethos.

00:32:09.780 They are both precious.

00:32:12.400 They have to be preserved.

00:32:14.760 And no one should come to Australia without an expectation of living in an Anglo-Celtic culture 0.99

00:32:22.100 with a Judeo-Christian ethos.

00:32:24.020 And we've got to be crystal clear about that.

00:32:26.120 Yeah, I mean, Canada doesn't have or didn't have quite the same issue with illegal migration

00:32:33.300 because the boat, how would you get to Canada by flow?

00:32:37.760 It's a very long journey.

00:32:38.720 I mean, it's a bit further from...

00:32:41.300 Afghanistan to Canada by boat is a pretty big trip.

00:32:44.800 Yeah, it's a little further than Java to Queen...

00:32:48.640 Sorry, what's the one?

00:32:49.360 Christmas Island.

00:32:50.900 Okay.

00:32:51.660 Java to Christmas Island is about 200 miles.

00:32:53.880 Yeah, so it's a bit more of a jump.

00:32:57.720 So, you know, we've had some illegal migration, but it's generally people who are being kicked

00:33:02.280 out of the states because they're illegal migrants there.

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

00:33:06.700 They just declare MBG status and our bureaucracy is too overwhelmed to be able to process.

00:33:11.920 But it's a relatively small number.

00:33:13.460 It's legal migration. 0.61

00:33:15.440 It was very high for a long time, even under Stephen Harper, but it was a generally merit-based

00:33:20.920 system, had a bunch of family re-indication stuff.

00:33:23.880 Which is problematic because you'd bring over older people who've never paid into the social 0.99

00:33:26.980 system, and then they're on the healthcare system.

00:33:29.080 Yeah.

00:33:29.720 But it was at least manageable.

00:33:32.240 But then legal migration, like in Australia, has just peaked far beyond any previous records,

00:33:39.760 completely swamped things.

00:33:41.060 Same issues with housing, downward pressure on wages, but also now major cultural conflict

00:33:48.380 we're starting to see because we're, we used to be on a merit-based system.

00:33:52.540 We were attracting at least the upper crust or upper mid-level crust of people in other

00:33:57.160 countries, which isn't very good for those countries when we're sucking all the best away 0.95

00:34:00.840 from them to begin with.

00:34:02.020 But we're not getting just the best now.

00:34:05.460 And it's not, it's just not very compatible in general.

00:34:11.580 And so it is taking people like me who used to be pretty unabashedly pro-reasonable levels

00:34:18.020 of migration and to the point where I think we need to pretty much seal the border for 0.57

00:34:22.140 a decade with, yeah, we'll take your top engineers and doctors, we'll take like 5,000 people a

00:34:28.140 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 1.00

00:34:35.140 got to almost stop migration for at least a period of a decade to digest it and catch up.

00:34:39.800 Well, Derek, you're making very good points.

00:34:44.820 I mean, I mean, like Canada, Australia is an immigrant society and the glory of Australia

00:34:51.440 is that people have been able to come here from all over the world and make a wonderful

00:34:57.060 living for themselves and for their kids.

00:35:00.140 But just at the moment, as I said, it's getting almost completely out of control, mostly because

00:35:09.200 government has effectively subcontracted out immigration to educational institutions that

00:35:18.340 use overseas students as a cash out, become part of their business model, at the heart of

00:35:23.240 their business model, and to, I think, slightly unscrupulous businesses that would rather import

00:35:32.400 people from overseas, allegedly on a short-term basis than pay locals what the locals would

00:35:41.620 expect to do the relevant job or to train up locals to do the relevant job.

00:35:46.540 So essentially, we've been bringing people in often to do relatively short-term English language

00:35:54.720 courses, to work in menial jobs.

00:36:01.540 Most of them are managing to stay one way or another.

00:36:04.980 I don't blame them for wanting to come to Australia.

00:36:07.820 Who wouldn't?

00:36:08.740 I don't blame them for wanting to make a good life in Australia.

00:36:12.120 Who shouldn't?

00:36:13.820 But at these numbers, it's just not fair to the Australians who are already here because

00:36:21.360 of the impact on wages, the impact on housing, the impact on infrastructure, and yes, the

00:36:27.260 impact on social cohesion, because at least some of the recent migrant communities have

00:36:36.040 tended to bring their troubles with them, to bring their, if you like, prejudices with

00:36:41.720 them.

00:36:41.920 And I dare say many people in Canada noticed the day of infamy, October the 9th, when you

00:36:49.400 had a large and angry crowd gather outside the Sydney Opera House screaming obscenities against

00:36:57.060 Jewish people and shouting what sounded very much like gas the Jews.

00:37:01.820 Now, that was largely recent immigrants to our country.

00:37:07.700 I guess you've got an unholy alliance between recent immigrants from Muslim countries and 1.00

00:37:18.100 the cultural Marxist left, which sees Israel as a settler-colonialist obscenity and sees Jewish

00:37:30.900 people as manifestations of white privilege, et cetera.

00:37:34.520 So you've got this ugly alliance, which has produced a real outpouring of anti-Semitism or 0.91

00:37:44.660 Jew hatred in our country, which I think is, well, it's sad, it's despicable, it's un-Australian, 0.54

00:37:51.960 and it's been exacerbated by migration. 0.90

00:37:56.920 Yeah.

00:37:57.040 And we've, we've seen it right across, right across the Western world, it is just a bizarre

00:38:03.580 alliance where you've got people who are practically medieval barbarians by, depending on how you're

00:38:12.260 defining the political spectrum, you could put them as the furthest possible right in, in

00:38:16.360 some kind of way, I guess, allied with cultural Marxists.

00:38:21.600 But it's, yeah, it's a whole other topic.

00:38:26.360 It's, it's, I mean, what are we going to do here?

00:38:30.000 I mean, we've got to get back to common sense.

00:38:34.480 And a common sense view is that countries like Australia, Canada, Britain, America are the least racist,

00:38:44.020 most colourblind countries on earth.

00:38:45.840 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.

00:38:55.940 And other than slavery, I think there's a lot to be, I mean, let's put slavery to one side,

00:39:02.460 which was a dreadful blot on, on America.

00:39:06.900 But Indigenous people in Australia, in the long run, are much better off, thanks to British settlement. 0.99

00:39:14.780 Yeah, I presume the same as, it's very much the same.

00:39:17.900 We don't, we don't like to admit it, but it's true. 1.00

00:39:20.060 The British Empire, yes, there were exploitative elements.

00:39:25.140 Yes, there was a degree of paternalism, maybe even racism.

00:39:29.500 But in the end, the British Empire has been good for the world.

00:39:34.680 Parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights.

00:39:39.460 All of these things were byproducts.

00:39:42.920 Believe it's slavery.

00:39:43.880 It was the first major power to end slavery and declare little war on it. 0.69

00:39:48.260 The Royal Navy spent the best part of a century stamping out the transatlantic slave trade.

00:39:55.960 And thousands of British sailors' untold wealth was consumed in this essentially moral project

00:40:06.000 to stamp out slavery.

00:40:08.600 I mean, much of the British Empire in Africa was a result of the flag following missionaries 0.99

00:40:14.320 who were there specifically to stamp out man's inhumanity of man,

00:40:19.200 of which slavery is the most obvious and gross manifestation.

00:40:24.680 So, honestly, we should be so proud of our record.

00:40:32.420 And Britain in particular, no country on earth has had more impact on the modern world for

00:40:39.700 good than Britain. 0.58

00:40:40.680 I mean, when you think of the mother of parliaments, the Industrial Revolution, the emancipation of

00:40:47.860 minorities, all the world's common language, all originated in Britain.

00:40:54.300 And yet there's this epidemic of self-doubt, even self-loathing, across the Anglosphere right now.

00:41:02.800 And it must end because in the end, national self-loathing is just as toxic as personal self-loathing.

00:41:12.960 I mean, low self-esteem is personally poisonous.

00:41:18.000 And low national self-esteem is no less toxic.

00:41:23.220 Civilizational doubt.

00:41:24.820 I think it goes well beyond the Anglosphere.

00:41:26.520 I think it's Western civilization in general with a few exceptions, perhaps Poland, Hungary,

00:41:34.420 sometimes Australia, sometimes America, or portions within them.

00:41:40.460 And perhaps even France.

00:41:42.960 And some of the French are still pretty damn proud of being French.

00:41:46.800 But in general, it's a problem that plagues the Anglosphere, but also I think the West

00:41:52.420 in general.

00:41:53.220 It does plague the West in general, but it's most acute in the Anglosphere. 0.88

00:41:57.380 And this is the paradox.

00:41:59.000 The Anglosphere countries are the most successful countries, and yet they're the most plagued by

00:42:04.340 doubt.

00:42:05.120 And it's almost like it's success guilt that we're suffering from.

00:42:09.100 And we've got to get over this, and the sooner the better.

00:42:13.960 You mentioned countries like Poland.

00:42:16.360 I think the reason why it's different and better in places like Poland is because in very recent

00:42:24.060 times, they've had existential struggles to deal with.

00:42:28.160 I mean, the one Western country that still absolutely has a national project is Israel, because Israel

00:42:34.740 is constantly subject to existential threat.

00:42:37.680 And for a couple of generations now, we in the main Anglosphere countries have not been subject

00:42:47.380 to existential threat.

00:42:48.640 And we've had it very, very good.

00:42:53.640 And this is, again, one of the paradoxes of these times.

00:42:57.520 Well, I think you're making the good times create weak men argument.

00:43:01.400 Materially, we've never been better off.

00:43:06.420 Spiritually, we've rarely been worse off.

00:43:09.420 Okay, well, I want to, I think that transitions somewhat to, I guess, what's just happening

00:43:20.640 now with, you know, war breaking out between Israel and Iran, potential war, you know, so

00:43:27.640 often we have exchanges of military assets, we don't declare it an actual war, grossest

00:43:33.140 example possibly being Vietnam.

00:43:34.900 But, you know, what could certainly escalate into a more conventional war here?

00:43:38.700 Or we could have a special military operation.

00:43:40.960 Special military.

00:43:41.720 A war that's now lasted more than three years.

00:43:44.380 Yeah, yeah.

00:43:45.280 I'm not even sure Iraq and Afghanistan were declared officially war.

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

00:43:50.740 It was a war on an idea.

00:43:54.800 But we don't declare war on states anymore for some reason.

00:43:58.120 But, you know, so when I was speaking with folks who were helping set up the interview

00:44:02.700 here, I said, well, here's the different areas I want to talk about.

00:44:05.620 I said, potential war between Israel and Iran.

00:44:08.620 Well, that changed last, yesterday evening when, our time at least, when Israel launched 0.84

00:44:15.720 what it says are preemptive strikes on Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities, research facilities,

00:44:23.240 decapitated much of the general staff of the Iranian military complex.

00:44:29.980 It's obviously got a response from Iran.

00:44:36.400 Iran's not been particularly successful so far, but it's been less than 24 hours.

00:44:42.120 I'd be pretty shocked if this does not escalate further.

00:44:45.240 The question, I guess, is open.

00:44:51.800 I'm pretty skeptical of, well, any country that says it's launching a preemptive strike.

00:44:58.060 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 0.72

00:45:05.260 Seven Days War.

00:45:05.960 It very likely would have been either a loss or a near loss like Yom Kippur if they had not. 0.96

00:45:10.440 But they provided evidence post facto that it was necessary that its Arab neighbors were 0.98

00:45:17.420 preparing to launch an attack.

00:45:19.160 But they provided that evidence.

00:45:22.360 But, you know, we have the example of the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States

00:45:26.600 and its allies that turned out to be, if we're being charitable, incomplete intelligence.

00:45:35.160 If we're being less charitable, false intelligence.

00:45:37.780 And we, I mean, they certainly toppled a brutal dictatorship.

00:45:44.040 Yeah.

00:45:45.140 A murderous and an evil regime.

00:45:48.140 Yeah, absolutely.

00:45:49.460 But, I mean, the Middle East is a different region here where it's, you know, it's difficult

00:45:53.660 to simply roll in, you know, here's McDonald's and car washes, cable TV and democracy.

00:46:01.260 It didn't take.

00:46:03.900 That's an open argument.

00:46:04.920 Would Iraq have just been better living under the brutal dictator?

00:46:08.500 It's a difficult question to say.

00:46:10.680 But regardless of who it was overthrowing, it was based, the costless belli of war was

00:46:15.860 false.

00:46:17.060 And I think it's incumbent upon Israel to provide some pretty solid evidence for this.

00:46:24.120 The Iranian regime is arguably even significantly worse than the regime, the Ba'athist regime 0.87

00:46:31.060 of Saddam Hussein.

00:46:32.160 It's about as bad a regime as it gets.

00:46:35.140 But I think it's incumbent on, is it not incumbent on Israel, though, to provide some real tangible

00:46:40.380 evidence that there was an imminent threat of Iran acquiring what they're saying between

00:46:44.700 10 to 15 nuclear devices?

00:46:46.380 My understanding is that unlike Iraq prior to 2003, there have been inspectors going into

00:46:58.120 Iran in recent times, and they are reporting the physical evidence of centrifuges and others which

00:47:05.760 are producing weapons-grade material.

00:47:08.140 As far as I am aware, that is simply incontrovertible.

00:47:13.140 It's as realistic as the evidence of the Holocaust, for instance, which some people will still 1.00

00:47:21.220 deny.

00:47:21.580 That's my understanding.

00:47:23.860 And I think Israel has every right to take preemptive action against a regime which has

00:47:33.700 been threatening for decades to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, which has been the 1.00

00:47:38.900 sponsor of numerous acts of terrorism against Israel, and which has been hell-bent on getting

00:47:45.900 a nuclear weapon for at least two or three decades.

00:47:49.540 I think this is as justified a strike as any can be.

00:47:56.180 Yes, let's expect Israel to produce appropriate evidence of exactly what it's done.

00:48:07.660 Let's hope that the strikes succeed in their objective and then end.

00:48:16.700 Let's hope that there are minimal civilian casualties.

00:48:23.340 And let's hope against hope that the Iranian people might rise up against their oppressors 0.99

00:48:29.980 and install a better regime.

00:48:32.980 Let's dwell for a moment, though, on the Iraq War, which has cast a shadow across the contemporary

00:48:40.660 psyche in the same way that the Vietnam War appeared to cast a shadow across the psyche of

00:48:45.900 Americans growing up in the 1960s.

00:48:49.540 Look, I was part of the Howard government, which joined the Anglo-American assault on Iraq.

00:48:58.540 We all thought that there were weapons of mass destruction.

00:49:03.180 Even the opponents of the war thought there were weapons of mass destruction.

00:49:07.180 Saddam kept telling us that he had weapons of mass destruction and he wanted to use them.

00:49:12.180 We knew he'd used gas on his own people.

00:49:17.380 And I thought that was an eminently justified assault to topple the regime.

00:49:24.980 I still think it was eminently justified.

00:49:28.420 The Americans who were running the show made two cataclysmic and fundamental mistakes. 0.99

00:49:37.540 They disbanded the Iraqi army, which meant there were half a million unemployed guys with guns.

00:49:42.980 And they disbanded the Ba'athist civil service, which meant that no one knew how to run anything.

00:49:49.220 And the country swiftly descended into anarchy.

00:49:53.860 We had a plan for the war.

00:49:56.020 We didn't have a plan for the peace.

00:49:58.500 The Americans and regrettably the British and Australian governments went along with this.

00:50:03.060 The Americans had facilely assumed that windbags in exile, like that Shalabi guy, had far more support than they really had. 0.98

00:50:16.740 And in retrospect, the best thing would have been to restore the Iraqi monarchy, because the only countries in the Middle East that work are the monarchies.

00:50:29.060 That would have been very much in contradiction, though, to kind of the neoconservative push at the time of spreading democracy, that we're going to plant the seeds of democracy in the Middle East, and it's going to flower.

00:50:42.740 Which is a nice ideal, but centuries of experience disproves it.

00:50:51.460 I mean, democracy is a desirable further state of development, but you can't simply impose democracy on what is effectively a medieval society.

00:51:11.020 I mean, as I said, the only countries that really work in the Middle East are the monarchies.

00:51:16.360 Democracy in the Middle East tends to be one man, one vote once, and it becomes a dictatorship, and it's usually a much worse dictatorship than the monarchical regimes, because the king wants his grandson to be in the same position that he's in one day.

00:51:38.680 He's never going to completely alienate anyone in practice, monarchies are negotiated societies rather than societies ruled by fear or force.

00:51:52.600 And unfortunately, America is still neuralgic about monarchy because of the experience of George the Third.

00:51:59.100 It's hard to imagine the American.

00:52:00.020 I think you are right.

00:52:01.120 Because of the experience of George the Third.

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

00:52:04.020 But if they weren't prepared to come at a monarchy, which would have been the best outcome, they should have found the least bad of Saddam's generals and said, mate, you're in charge, and we will back you on two conditions. 0.50

00:52:20.060 One, no genocide against your own people, and two, no terrorism against ours.

00:52:26.140 But instead, yes, they tried to... 1.00

00:52:29.940 It's the arson of a bitch. 1.00

00:52:31.520 I think it actually... 1.00

00:52:34.380 They tried to impose a quasi-Western democracy.

00:52:39.480 It's now got to, I think, a tolerably good position, but it's taken two decades, the best part of two decades.

00:52:52.220 And in the process, there's been a ferocious civil war, which has cost hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, thousands of Western lives, and it's spilled over into Syria, which is an ongoing issue.

00:53:12.180 So, look, you're right, but just because things have had bad consequences doesn't mean that they shouldn't have been done.

00:53:26.940 And I don't think, even with the wisdom of hindsight, that overthrowing Saddam Hussein was a bad thing to do.

00:53:38.920 It's just that there should have been much more realistic planning go into it.

00:53:43.220 I can see it.

00:53:47.080 I can see it.

00:53:49.080 I'm just not sure it was worth, you know, the human, the cost of blood and treasure to get here.

00:53:55.080 But I can see where you're coming from.

00:53:57.420 But Iran is, I believe, two to three times the population of Iraq.

00:54:03.940 It's roughly 90 million people off the top of my mind.

00:54:07.340 Its military, I think, with reserves is at a million.

00:54:10.560 This is a substantially more powerful power to confront.

00:54:18.320 Like Iraq, it's got a very divided population, less so ethnically.

00:54:21.780 You know, Iraq had the Sunni domination, the majority of Shiites.

00:54:27.460 Iran is almost entirely Shiite.

00:54:29.680 It has a few minorities, but not major components, you know, the way Iraq has the Kurds.

00:54:34.380 But it's divided between, you know, a large minority of fairly liberal, westernized people who tend to leave in large numbers.

00:54:43.160 And then the more theocratic, religious, fundamentalist side.

00:54:51.480 There does not seem to be a way to outright march in and liberate it.

00:54:57.240 You know, Iraq style here. 0.97

00:54:58.880 Sort of an utterly cataclysmic war.

00:55:01.020 And I know that's not what you're advocating for.

00:55:02.460 My concern, though, is that if they were on the verge of a bomb, I think Israel was totally justified. 1.00

00:55:11.840 That's the big question mark for me right now.

00:55:13.980 If they were on, if they were imminently on the verge of a bomb, well, then Israel really had no choice. 0.74

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

00:55:21.980 If they were not, though, or Israel does not provide sufficiently convincing evidence of that, my concern is then that they have potentially just ignited a major regional war that could pull the western powers in.

00:55:39.680 Well, that's all possible.

00:55:42.540 And, of course, Iran has always denied that its nuclear program was for military purposes.

00:55:50.660 But it's always insisted that it did have a very active nuclear program, supposedly for peaceful purposes.

00:55:59.880 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?

00:56:15.400 Well, because IEA inspectors have been in Iran and they've brought back reports of what they have seen with their own eyes.

00:56:26.500 Now, as I said, the Iranians have always denied that this is for military purposes.

00:56:34.920 But you do not need highly enriched uranium for anything other than military purposes.

00:56:40.220 And it's clear, it's as clear as anything can be, that they were increasingly advancing towards highly enriched uranium.

00:56:52.420 And look, all Israel wants to do, I mean, there are lots of things Israel would like.

00:56:58.700 I mean, Israel would like a friendly regime in Tehran.

00:57:03.260 And Israel would like the kind of relationship with Tehran that it has with the Emirates, for instance.

00:57:10.620 But all Israel is actually doing is trying to stop Iran's nuclear program from further progressing.

00:57:20.380 And I think that's a perfectly reasonable objective.

00:57:22.460 And let me also say this, Derek.

00:57:27.880 There's been no condemnation of these Israeli strikes thus far from the Saudis, from the Emiratis, from the Jordanians.

00:57:36.420 Because...

00:57:36.780 Well, none of these guys like the Iranians. 1.00

00:57:37.980 These guys are...

00:57:38.880 Look, they are all in fear, in existential fear of the apocalyptic Ayatollahs of Tehran. 0.94

00:57:49.340 And I tell you this, Derek, if Iran did get a nuclear weapon, within months, the Saudis would be buying one off the Pakistanis. 0.96

00:58:00.940 Yeah.

00:58:01.920 Turkey would be buying one off the Pakistanis. 0.99

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

00:58:14.340 So, look, provided it's been successful, and provided it doesn't substantially escalate, I think the Israelis have done us all a favor.

00:58:25.140 But those are two still big questions.

00:58:27.200 Was it successful?

00:58:28.100 There are no certainties in this life.

00:58:31.120 But sometimes...

00:58:32.160 And was it...

00:58:32.880 It just got to be brave.

00:58:34.120 And was it justified?

00:58:35.040 Like, were they on the imminent threat of it?

00:58:36.600 I mean, there have been reports that Iran was on the verge of a bomb for 30 years now.

00:58:40.540 Well, that doesn't mean they wouldn't actually eventually get there, but it means I'm...

00:58:45.540 I want to see the proof.

00:58:48.740 I think you're like Thomas, sir, in the Gospels, sir.

00:58:55.220 All right.

00:58:56.240 Well, I certainly can be convinced.

00:58:57.840 Well, let's maybe wrap it with a discussion of the G7.

00:59:04.840 I mean, fortuitous time that you're here.

00:59:07.760 It's Friday right now on Sunday.

00:59:11.460 Just west of where we're sitting right now.

00:59:13.900 We're in downtown Calgary.

00:59:15.440 Just west of us in Kananaskis.

00:59:17.440 Close to where I live.

00:59:19.760 The leaders of the G7 are going to be meeting.

00:59:22.360 I mean, Iran is obviously...

00:59:26.360 I don't know how high on the agenda it was going to be before, but it's going to be probably pretty top now.

00:59:33.400 Anything big...

00:59:35.280 I mean, every time Trump's at the table, it's so hard to predict anything that's going to take place.

00:59:40.340 You know, even his biggest supporters will admit it's...

00:59:43.680 I can't imagine who actually has to take care of planning this guy's agenda every day.

00:59:48.320 It's kind of chaos.

00:59:49.160 But particularly at this moment where Carney actually has him, I think, in large measure to thank for being in the prime minister's chair with his talk of 51st state, the trade war that took place.

01:00:04.800 But at the same time, he's got to be really nervous about what Trump might do because while there's a lot of similarities between Canada and Australia, I think one of the big differences is there's no major secessionist movements in Australia.

01:00:16.480 I don't know where they would really want to go.

01:00:19.160 You know, but in addition to Quebec, it's now very, very real in Alberta here.

01:00:23.260 We have a citizens' initiative law that's been amended here, and it is near certainty.

01:00:29.120 We're going to be having a referendum on independence here in Alberta, potentially even Saskatchewan soon after, on independence.

01:00:35.420 No one really in either Alberta or Saskatchewan talks about joining the United States.

01:00:40.640 It's not really something most people are interested in.

01:00:44.380 But Trump could look at this as a kind of power play for closer union with at least Alberta and Saskatchewan.

01:00:52.280 What do you, I don't know, do you know the man and do you, what opportunities for mischief do you see there, where he's going to literally be in Southern Alberta, kind of the heart of the movement, of the independence movement in Alberta, at a time where he's been just dropping bombs on Canadian domestic politics?

01:01:10.980 Well, I think that there's two Trumps effectively.

01:01:16.520 There's domestic Trump, who's largely a positive force, and there's foreign Trump, who has often been a negative force.

01:01:25.440 And most obviously, foreign Trump has been a negative force via his stream of insults against Canada, which I think were a key factor in the defeat of the Conservative Party here.

01:01:41.020 Look, you're right.

01:01:44.100 I think any event involving President Trump invariably becomes, he becomes the centre of attention.

01:01:56.300 He loves that.

01:01:58.480 He loves keeping everyone off balance and uncertain as to his next move.

01:02:06.800 I think, frankly, the best thing for anyone to do in responding to Trump is just keep calm and carry on.

01:02:18.060 Keep calm and carry on.

01:02:20.700 And I think that Trump's tariffs on Canada, in the end, are going to hurt America, at least as much as they hurt Canada.

01:02:29.720 And I think over time, they're going to get rethought.

01:02:32.920 I think the risk in America at the moment is a recession brought on by the uncertain investment climate and the price hikes that the tariffs inevitably will bring with them.

01:02:47.280 And if Trump wants to secure his legacy, he's actually got to produce economic success, not economic chaos.

01:02:59.000 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?

01:03:06.880 Well, they will obviously talk a lot about Iran and they will no doubt urge both sides to de-escalate, which is fair enough, as long as Israel's objective of preventing an Iranian bomb has succeeded. 0.83

01:03:23.560 I hope that for the first time in years, the G7 might actually talk more about energy security and less about emissions.

01:03:36.020 And if that happens and we've got drill baby, drill Trump coming together with a carny who at least says he wants to see resource development.

01:03:49.800 So let's hope that we get at least more common sense on energy out of this G7 than we have out of recent ones.

01:04:00.460 This final question.

01:04:01.640 Have you seen the movie on the emu war?

01:04:03.960 I haven't.

01:04:04.420 No, no, no, I haven't seen it yet either, but it's it's the emu war.

01:04:10.060 When your country fought a war against emus, birds and lost.

01:04:16.240 And really, it's only lost one war and it was against birds.

01:04:19.200 Now that you mention it, they made a movie.

01:04:22.480 There was a campaign, I think, in Western Australia in the 1930s to eradicate emus.

01:04:30.540 It was a special military operation.

01:04:32.020 It was a misguided campaign.

01:04:35.860 I think I think very few people were aware it was happening at the time and they quickly worked out that it was a failure.

01:04:43.240 I think I think the I think the emu wars might ultimately be a bit of a piss take.

01:04:50.940 My favorite thing when I when I meet Australian, most Australians don't seem to know about it.

01:04:56.460 I bring this up, I make the take out their phone and Google emu war and there's a Wikipedia article and it literally is structured like regular wars like World War Two has like the belligerents on one side with casualties listed.

01:05:10.160 I mean, it was kind of like Vietnam.

01:05:11.820 You beat the emus on the casualty account, but ultimately it was unsuccessful.

01:05:16.100 There we are.

01:05:18.060 Well, that's one.

01:05:18.720 That's one more.

01:05:19.580 I'm glad to be lost.

01:05:21.060 All right.

01:05:22.600 Tony Abbott, I've taken you way longer than I was expected here, but I really appreciate your time.

01:05:28.520 It's fascinating.

01:05:29.660 And I hope you enjoy your time here in Alberta.

01:05:32.060 Thanks, Derek.

01:05:32.660 Thank you.

01:05:33.620 All right.

01:05:35.120 That's Tony Abbott, the former Prime Minister of Australia, joining us for a wide ranging talk.

01:05:41.000 Thank you for your time.

01:05:42.160 Remember to go to WesternStandard.news.

01:05:43.920 Click on subscribe.

01:05:44.800 It's only ten dollars a month or a hundred dollars a year to get unlimited access to all Western Standard content.

01:05:49.800 Thank you for joining us today.

01:05:50.920 God bless.

01:06:03.620 God bless.

FILDEBRANDT： Energy politics, immigration, and the crisis of the West

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