The Hated and the Dead

EP42: Tony Abbott

July 31, 2022 Tom Leeman Season 4
The Hated and the Dead
EP42: Tony Abbott
Show Notes Transcript

Tony Abbott was Prime Minister of Australia from 2013 until 2015. A brilliant and ruthless Leader of the Opposition, Abbott's blunt and confrontational style fell flat as prime minister. After just two years in charge, Abbott was deposed by Malcolm Turnbull, leaving office as the most unpopular Australian PM of modern times.

Abbott’s brief premiership represents part of what today’s guest calls the “Italy with Crocodiles” period- Australia had six prime ministers in eight years, but all the while remained one of the best governed countries in the world. At a time when the UK is selecting its third prime minister in six years, the UK would do well to learn from the Australian experience, especially because Britain, unlike Australia, cannot point to stellar governance or administration from top to bottom. As such, this episode is as much about the wider Italy with Crocodiles period as it is about Abbott, and as much about our near future here in Britain as it is about Australia’s recent past.

My guest today is Helen Dale (tweets @_HelenDale). Helen is the author of several novels, including the award-winning The Hand that Signed the Paper, and also worked as Chief of Staff and legal advisor to Australian Senator David Leyonhjelm at the time of Tony Abbott’s premiership. She has also written for the Telegraph and the Spectator, as well as daily newspaper the Australian. 

Unknown:

Hello and welcome to the hated in the dead with Tom Leeman. In this week's episode, I turned to Australia, and I'm looking at one of that country's most unpopular Prime Ministers of all time. Tony Abbott was Prime Minister of Australia from 2013 until 2015. Abbott is in some ways a man of contradictions. He's a devout Catholic, but he's also a member of the centre right Liberal Party going against a traditional supply of Catholic votes to Australia's centre left Labour Party. That's labour spelled without a U. Unlike its British sister party. He was also a brilliant leader of the opposition, who hounded Australia's first female Prime Minister Julia Gillard incessantly, but found that his confrontational, blunt and often offensive personal style, fell flat as prime minister. Abbott's brief premiership, which was ended when Abbott was spelt or deposed by fellow liberal Malcolm Turnbull represented part of what today's guest calls the Italy with crocodiles period. Australia had six Prime Ministers in eight years. But all the while remains one of the best governed countries in the world. At a time when the UK is selecting its third Prime Minister in six years, and when four of the UK his last five prime ministers have each only managed three years in charge, the UK would do well to learn from the Australian experience, especially because Britain, unlike Australia, cannot claim stellar governance or administration at any level. As such, this episode is as much about the wider Italy with crocodiles period, as it is about Abbott and as much about our near future here in Britain, as it is about Australia's recent past. My guest today is Helen Dale. Helen is the author of several novels, including the award winning the hand that signed the paper, and also worked as Chief of Staff and legal adviser to Australian Senator David Lionell. At the time of Tony Abbott's Premiership. She has also written for the Telegraph and The Spectator, as well as daily newspaper The Australian. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to introduce Tony Abbott. Good afternoon, Helen. How are you? Oh, hello, Tom. How are you? I'm well. We are discussing Tony Abbott today. Hello. He was the Prime Minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015. His political career was quite a lot longer than that, because we're about to find out. Yes. Australia as a political system has inherited quite a lot of aspects of the British system of government. It's a parliamentary system. It has two big parties, one in blue, one in red. But there are some quite important differences between Britain and Australia's political system. What do you think as an Australian are the big differences that a British audience needs to be aware of in order to understand how Australian politics works, the largest single largest thing that causes the biggest number of differences. So, basically, the differences that between the two countries flow from this and that is the electoral system. The electoral system is unique, it is among the most complex and probably is the most complex in the developed world. Australia also has almost uniquely politically literate people. And that is so high levels of engagement and high levels of political literacy. And that is because of compulsory voting. Voting has been compulsory in Australia since 1924. And whilst it to Westminster system with responsible government and all the things that you parliamentary sovereignty that you associate with with parliament, parliamentary systems, it has two houses, it has an entrenched constitution. The two houses are elected differently, both using quite complex electoral systems. The law house like that in the UK is constituency based with single member electorate, and they each have a single member, and they are worked out with great care, so that you finish up with what is called one vote one value across the entire country. The Australian Electoral Commission is much better run than any equivalent elsewhere in the world. That's why in those corruption analyses Australia always comes out with the cleanest electoral election system in the world. Very clean. Lower House uses a form of instant runoff as the Americans call it, and as you call the Alternative Vote, Australians call it compulsory press Rent shop, which means you have to number all the boxes. All of them, you can't just say one and two, and then let the vote the expression in Australian politics is known as exhaust to let the vote exhaust you can't do that. And you are not allowed to put the two major parties last and with the same number. So you can't go a whole heap of minor parties 12345 and then put labour and the coalition six, six, you're not allowed to do that there was a fella who attempted to do recommend doing that because he disliked the way the electoral system worked to then try to exhaust in that way and it's designed was designed by a woman who's a very clever mathematician will be called Catherine Spence. And a man called Albert Langer actually disagreed with this because he thought that he didn't like the way the major parties had to govern from the centre because of the compulsory voting. So he advocated and it became known as the Langer vote, and he finished up going to jail for it. So this gives you an idea that Australians will quite jealously guard their electoral system. Now, that's the lighthouse, the Opera House uses a version of single transferable vote, which you'll be familiar with from Ireland, once again, also designed by the same individual Catherine spends based on the hair clock system, but with some fairly important modifications to the hair clock system, including a relatively high quota. So you need to get 14% of the vote in order to get a seat in the Senate. But that, of course, is not just number ones. It is preferences. So you have the preferential system again, in the Senate. But you don't have to number all the boxes, there are often hundreds of boxes, you only have to number 12 of them. You used to be able to have used to have compulsory numbering of all the boxes and allow the parties to do it for you. That was actually changed by Malcolm Turnbull in an attempt to reduce the number of minor party senators. And it actually didn't work that Australians are numerous, we are all taught how to deal with this electoral system when we're at school. And Australia is one of those countries that schools relatively well on the PISA scores for, for maths that tends to be up with the Asian countries like Japan and Taiwan and the People's Republic of China. And so Australians are familiar with their electoral system. And if governments try to outsmart the people, the people then very rapidly start to outsmart the government. And the that's the Senate, that's the upper house. And then constitutionally, that the entrenched constitution that Australia has, like the US gives the two houses equal power. And because in certain respects, the Senate is more democratically elected. That's one of the effects of single transferable vote, it's more representative, even though it's quite moderated, it does not look like the Knesset, it does not look like that wonder Stark, in Germany, because of a lot more care went into its design, basically, to better design system. And the use of the quotas means you do actually have to be quite popular to be a senator. And also, federalism means that each state gets 12 senators and the territories get two each. And the effect of that is that you get differences between the states can be expressed in the Senate. So South Australia has for many years traditionally produced senators who are opposed to gambling, no pokies poker machines, and I used to know Xenophon who was elected or no pokies platform, and he came from South Australia. And Queensland is traditionally the most conservative of the states, and has for that reason had the largest number of representatives from one nation. Victoria has a lively tradition of socialism going back over 100 years, and that expresses itself now. In the election of a relatively large number of green senators, they usually get one more than everybody else. So the diff, the states differ in a federal system as well. What this means when you have the two houses of power or two houses, both alike in dignity in fair Canberra, where we lay out a scene basically, is that the only constitutional process that Australia has had, which was in 1975 happened because the Senate rejected an appropriations bill, which of course you can't do in this country, because of the reforms as a result of the two sets of Parliament Act, which were designed principally So David Lloyd George could get the people's budget through Australia does not have that mechanism. So what tends to happen now, after that constitutional crisis, which which was very serious, the government was, you know, running out of money to pay the armed forces and civil service, which in Australia is called public service, and things like that. So, what you tend to get now is an undertaking from parties that they will not block supply that is the expression that will not block the money supply. Although From time to time you do get the minor parties will deviate from this, particularly the grains, they've suggested that they are willing to block supply at various times. But it does, it has only happened once and it didn't really bring the country to a sense standstill in 1975. So that's a very, very brief summary. But to nap to nail it all down, it is complex, it is intensely mathematical. The population is extremely civically literate as a result of the combination of the compulsion, which is goes back to 1924. And the education system. And it's very, and it's very hard to snow the Australian people, it's intensely representative. This is a country that cares about democracy and majorities rather than liberty and rights. Right. Okay. I think the the federalism point I was sort of expected to come up I'm less familiar with the the point about political literacy, but it's quite interesting. And I'd like to filter that into some questions. I'm gonna ask you later, if we turn to Albert. Albert was born in London in 1957, when he indeed studied at Oxford, later when he was a young man, but his family returned to live in Australia when he was still quite young. What sort of childhood was this? Was the Abbott family, a wealthy family? Was this a was this a an upbringing, easy upbringing? Would you say? No, no, Tony Abbott, this is where Tony Abbott is quite a distinctive political figure, and and in certain respects, did not finish up on the side of politics that you would expect for someone of his background to finish up on the coalition, the Liberal National Coalition. His family was Catholic, Tony Abbott, was Catholic himself. And whilst he was very clever scholarships all the way through school and, and went to like posh schools, he did so because he once got academic scholarships. He was clever. And he finished up going to Oxford because he was a Rhodes Scholar. There are two big scholarships to Oxford from Australia, that the Rhodes Scholarship and the Clarendon scholarship and almost without exception, someone from Australia who went to Oxford, won one of these scholarships, I was a Clarendon scholar, I went to Oxford. So this is very common, and it's just based on your academic results. I'm Tony Abbott was a Rhodes Scholar. And so one of the things that Australia has inherited from the UK, but in a way that is probably worse than the situation in England and closer to the situation in Scotland, without being as serious as the situation is in Northern Ireland. There hasn't ever been violence as a result of this is quite serious sectarianism. And so what that meant, particularly up until about 1970, was that if you were Catholic, you tended to vote Labour and support the Labour Party, and the sort of traditional Catholic Catholic ideas about subsidiarity and supporting the poor and the trade union movement fed into the labour movement. And Tony Abbott's family and he originally had that sort of background. He was so Catholic, he actually went to seminary for a few years. But he had to use the line he couldn't keep the rule being the rule of Saint Benedict, of course, and he finished up with a girlfriend and having to leave because they want to get married and have kids. So that meant that he could be a Catholic priest. It was fairly basic stuff. And it didn't make mean that he was a weird refer or anything. There's lots of men wash out of the priesthood for this reason for that reason. So, initially, he was that Labour tried to get hold of him because a very talented young Catholic man, they would expect reasonably that he would finish up his labour. And why he didn't finish up in labour was that this was also the period when labour started to, instead of just being a party about trade unionism and defending worker rights and worker wages and conditions. They started to be pro choice. They started to be quite feminist Labour governments did things like decriminalising, homosexuality decriminalising prostitution in a couple of states, decriminalising cannabis, allowing you to have a certain number of plants in your garden like in South Australia. And Tony Abbott objected to that he was on board with the trade union and worker right part of it, making sure that people will pay good wages, but he wasn't on board with the social liberalism. And so what happened is that that drove him towards the coalition and he finished up being a coalition MP and was the member for wearing in in the in the Sydney beaches. He was also as a younger man, one of the leading organisers in the campaign, Australians for a con institutional monarchy, I think, is sort of the pressure group that was dedicated to retaining the queen as the Australian head of state. Does he have a strong emotional connection with Britain? Sorry, I think there's a bit of a lag. Yeah, I think he does. There is a strong tradition in Australia and I fall into this as well, of people who are born elsewhere in the Commonwealth, often Britain, but not always, sometimes it can be Canada or New Zealand, India or the West Indies. And when we had the citizenship crisis, it was all people from Commonwealth countries it was, you know, it was first it was in New Zealand, then it was a there was a Britain and then there was an Indian. And then then there was a Canadian, and it was all people from the British Commonwealth who had the dual citizenships. But there was this strong tendency, a large class of people from Britain had this and from Australia had this emotional tie to the United Kingdom. And I'm in my own family headed. I'm a dual national, my parents were well my father was born in Scotland. My father, my mother was born in the Republic of Ireland. What made Tony Abbott unusual is the Catholic tradition in Australia is significantly associated with Republicanism throughout the support for making Australia a republic. So it was quite unusual for someone like Tony Abbott, to be a monarchist. So here we have this odd religious tradition that has roots in the sectarianism again. I mean, it surprised me at the time when I found out that he was such a strong monarchist, because he's Catholic, and I'm used to Catholics being being Republicans, I mean, not always not 100 out of 100. But certainly quite commonly Republican, whereas people who were from I mean, from my family are like the Scottish Presbyterian, traditional from the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland, that they were all they're all monarchists and and I'm very proud of the Queen and sort of loyal and fly the flag and you would see people that would fly the Australian flag in the Union Jack at the same time together and often weighed them together with the clean came and things like that. And you well in in Diana's famous visit in the early 80s, as well, right. If Abbot, if we look at his political career a bit more closely, he entered parliament, he became a member of parliament in 1994. And in quite short order after that the liberal party the coalition party, came to power and under John Howard, and Howard was prime minister for I think, 11 and a half years it's as long as Margaret Thatcher was prime minister in the UK and a lot longer than any other Australian pm has managed since Abbott was a minister for most of the Howard Government in various different roles. Something that was said about Abbott's British contemporaries Prime Minister David Cameron was that his lack of ministerial experience prior to becoming Prime Minister of the UK was a real issue for him. It when he was in government, do you think Abbott's ministerial experience under Howard prepared him well for his premiership ultimately? I don't think so. No, because he just had certain character traits that that worked out in such a way that I'm not sure I buy this idea that you need cabinet experience to be a good Prime Minister, certainly not in Australia, because of the cultural traditions, maybe you do. But Australia is quite different. It's quite a different system. Abbott had a certain character traits, that it made him very effective as leader of the opposition, like astonishingly effective, he just, I mean, in 2007, when when John Howard Government was finally defeated, it ran out of lakes, basically, when governments get tired, and they just finally defeated Labour won in 2007. With Kevin Rudd, they won a landslide. It was like Tony Blair's landslide in 1997. You need to understand this, it was a real landslide. Yeah, the coalition should have been out of power for a decade. I mean, obviously, Australia has short terms, only three years. So it's not going to be as impressively long as you get, like Thatcher or Blair being in power for years and years and years. But you're still going to get a long period of orderly stable government. For the other side. John had actually lost his own seat. He lost the seat Bennelong in 2007. With the current slide they called it. Now, I was over here by this point, I was I was actually at Oxford. And so I didn't see Kevin Rudd campaign, but I knew him very well because I knew of him for a period. He was actually my MP. And he was very effective MP was very strongly liked in the seat. I knew he'd been coming to my door canvassing which you have to do in Australia, you have to really, really get shoe leather out not to get people to the polls, but to get them to get a personal connection with you. Because then because of the compulsory voting that person connection can really matter. And so Rob is a Queenslander, and he was an outsider in labour. Labour traditionally even as it became a bit more radical and a bit more feminist and so on and so forth, still recruited the bulk of its cabinet or shadow cabinet through the trade union movement. And Rod came from outside the trade union movement is an intellectual and being a real intellectual, the man speaks fluent Mandarin. Really, really, really clever. And the other thing is he also like Tony Abbott had a quite a difficult background. His parents were sharecroppers. Queensland, still has pockets. Not so much now. But certainly when Kevin Rudd was a young man, and a really quite serious poverty. I mean, I grew up in country Queensland, and I can remember really quite serious poverty from you know, when I was a little girl, I can remember that there were poor areas of Queensland that still had the night soil man to come around and clean everybody's outdoor lose out. Yeah, and the thing is, I'm not that old. So Kevin Rudd came from that very, very poor background, but he was also extremely clever. And his particular thing was foreign languages. And I think he finished up, he was one of the he's like, Boris Johnson, one of these polyglots. He could speak about six, but but the one he was famous for was Mandarin. Yeah, the Chinese couldn't put one over on him because of his linguistic skills. And anyway, he should have been Prime Minister for years. But it turned out precisely because he didn't come from that traditional labour background with the union people tend to be very good negotiators, you know, they've learned to sort of put themselves in the position of the, put them themselves in the other person's shoes, and negotiate. And so Kevin Rudd didn't have that, because he'd always been taught me always been clever. He spent decades of his life just being right all the time, because of how smart he was. It meant that he was absolutely useless prime minister and he was useless in the sense that he couldn't talk to his own party. And then he couldn't talk to the country either. And what finished up happening and this is where it gets very, very brutal, is that basically the, the person who's doing all the governance was the deputy prime minister, a woman called Julia Gilad, and the governance issues in the parliament in 2010 had become ridiculous. There was just a great backlog of legislation, nothing was happening. Kevin Rudd couldn't retain staff there was all sorts of huge problems. And and there's an expression in Australian English that goes like this Gilad spelt, wrong route in 2010. And that's why it's like a palace coup. It's the parliamentary party, which for labour in Australia is called the caucus. And for the coalition is called the party room. Over here we use for both labour and for the Conservatives we talk about the parliamentary party doesn't involve the membership or didn't at that point, or either party involved the membership at all It only involves the MPs, which is why it is can be so brutal and so swift. I mean, Rat Rod had hit the prime ministership taken for him in less than 24 hours. And it was so swift and so brutal, it didn't go to a vote. And anyway, Gilad thought that she had to go to an election because she hadn't been elected prime minister and this is a unfortunately a problem of influence from the United States in a parliamentary system you should not be doing Yes. It's not a presidential system. Stop copying America. It is. This is ridiculous. It's likewise same problem that the Tories are having now and that labour, Gordon Brown, I mean, it's Stop copying America is silly. Anyway, Gilad went to an election. But the problem was Gil ARDS opponent was this Tony Abbott character. And in 2010, she limped home. But then in 2013, because she'd had three years of just this relentless monstering by Abbott, who was an incredible parliamentary performer, he just cut people to pieces in the House of Representatives, which is the lower house, the equivalent of the commons. And anyone if you iandale actually came and covered some Australian politics and sat in both question time in both the the lower house in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. And the Senate is supposedly I mean, I used to work for a senator. It's supposedly more genteel. And at the time in Dale said, oh, dear Lord, I mean, this is just like a bear pit even that the more genteel house the Senate is like a bear pit. It's the brutality of Australian Parliament's is just astonishing. You know, things that people think that Boris Johnson has done that were rude or so on and so forth. If you put an Australian politician at the House of Commons that would just tear everybody on both sides to pieces and and be impervious themselves. Yeah, this is the thing that polluted the system is brutal. And it's a it's a real contact sport, right? I mean, you know, yes. If we if we think about Abbott as an opposition leader, he obviously went through this 2010 election, which he lost narrowly to do legalise Labour Party. You've mentioned him being a very effective speaker and debater if we go to the next election in 13, Labour had been in power for six years at this point. Was he a good campaigner? Was he as good a campaigner as he was a speaker? Yes, he's a very, very, very effective campaigner as well. He was a good good parliamentary performer and a very effective campaigner. And that's what led to the coalition victory in 2013. That was also when I senator that I later worked for David Lyon helm was elected, but he was a crossbencher and elected for a political party called the Liberal Democrats. But they're not the same as the Liberal Democrats here. Liberal Democrats in Australia are the same as the old liberals. So before the liberal SDP merger, proper liberals, you know, so kind of classic sort of weird, classical liberals, not the kind of people who go around campaigning about, you know, being able to buy goldfish in little plastic bags, and all the others have mad things that the Lib Dems have done. That Gladstone Ian liberals. Sure. And so, the despite the similarity of the name that politics are quite different. And say, Tony Abbott became prime minister in 2013. And his big problem as prime minister, was that this very effective negative campaigning that he had done and before that it's very effective parliamentary performer that he'd been, he then persisted with that it was like he continued to govern, but for behaving like an opposition leader. And of course, you can't do that, once you have a government, you have to rise to the occasion. You have to, you know, bring the country together. Yeah. And I know it's difficult for people, but you see people who we've got this current campaign going on now with the conservatives, and you've got Rishi Sunak and Liz, trust yet, Terry, great, lots of fear out of each other. And yet one of them is going to become prime minister probably trust, and she is then going to have to govern for the whole country. And this is actually very hard to do. You have to shift your character has to change. And avid couldn't make that shift. And he was just this relentlessly and pleasant person in the parliament to deal with. And I was by this point, I was working for Senator Lyon health. And it was just, I mean, I remember my senator just saying this is just a complete communication failure. He can't talk to any of us. He just can't get legislation through it. It's bad you give Can you give a few examples of, of this kind of unpleasant behaviour within bond, I want to get to some other behaviour of his outside Parliament, which you can probably guess the sort of thing I'm going to ask you about, but what was he What was the unpleasant behaviour inside parliament? Okay, what he would do is he would make undertakings to crossbenchers in order to get a vote. Now, one of the votes that he got from my boss and I remember he visited my my senators rooms in the parliament, Senator Lyon helm had a policy of trying to represent the interests of law abiding firearms owners. And there was an Adler a new kind of fire up shotgun called an Adela shotgun. And unusually, it was a seven shot shotgun rather than the traditional five shot, which is very useful if you're trying to kill feral pests like foxes, and feral cats and, and so on and so forth. And because of the historic tradition, in Australia, of having quite strict firearms laws, David had to make lots of concessions and, and say, Look, I will I will give you my vote on this piece of legislation that you want to get through. But please allow Australian farmers to have access to this new type of shotgun, which will be very good for getting rid of feral pests. And Tony Abbott gave him the undertaking said yes, you vote for this piece of legislation, I will ensure that the Adler is allowed to come to Australia. And I was present when this conversation took place. And so David loyally gave his vote on and voted with the government in the Senate and allowed a piece of legislation, I think, a piece of legislation that David didn't particularly like either, and then having got David's essential vote for this piece of legislation that he wanted Tony Abbott, the Adela was banned anyway. Regardless, he just went that I've got my vote out of you, and I'm now going to treat you with contempt. So what sort of stuff is he I'm sure he did, what sort of stuff? Was he actually trying to rally people around? Obviously, you said that he was a very negative leader when he was leader of the opposition. But as you've said, or alluded to parts of being in government is actually trying to rally around things rather than against them. What was he actually trying to get done as an as a liberal coalition, Prime Minister that I dealt with constantly, while I was Senator Lyon Helms, legal adviser, the huge thing where he was trying to sort of produce this quality of national unity, this counterterrorism legislation. And yes, there has been the odd bit of Islamist terrorism in Australia. And yes, there has been the odd bit of crime with roots in the religion. It didn't manifest in the same way. It's, you've seen Robert Herman, all of these places. They're the Pakistani Muslim men, and under aged, white girls in care in Australia, it wasn't that it was a series of quite serious rapes in Western Sydney. But the thing is, because the federal system, this is not something that Tony Abbott could do anything about the New South Wales Government dealt with it. And to be fair, Australia, this is where Australia is different from the UK. There isn't this kindness towards ethnic minorities, people don't make excuses for them in the same way. And the gang, the big gang of Muslim rapists, though Lebanese Muslims, they are all banged up for enormously long periods of time, the ringleaders were sent to jail for 55 years without parole. Extraordinarily harsh, you know, so basically, the Australian government, state government, New South Wales, lay down this marker. And the problem has just greatly diminished since because this tends to be the Australian systems. Culture is so different from British culture, it's the expression that we use is that you cut down the tall poppy, if you get up above yourself, you will be cut down. Sometimes even though an expression is translated of Japanese into into Australian English, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down flat. So it's much harder to make an argument about your specialness, oh, my ancestors were persecuted or, or, you know, Muslims are picked on or so on and so forth. It this just doesn't fly in Australia, the only people who are allowed to make that argument in Australia are the indigenous people, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, if anybody else tries to make that sort of argument, they just ignore them laughter. It's considered, you know, turned into jokes turned into the butt of jokes. And so whatever it was trying to do was rally the country around this, this rafts and raft of really quite a liberal national security legislation. Some of it was extraordinary. There was no and badly drafted, but they'd been doing it on the fly. I remember a piece of legislation came through that was so shockingly drafted, that you it was relatively easy to interpret a clause in it as allowing it to the security, which is the equivalent of like mi six, the the ability to torture people. And I wrote a speech for my boss, and also legal briefing, went to the Attorney General's department and the Attorney General's department had to admit with some annoyance that I was right. So this is the attempt to rally was all about national security, national security and counterterrorism, counterterrorism, foreign fighters, foreign fighters, all of all of that, imagine what's happened over that. I can never remember her name that lasts who's gone away and finished up in Syria or bang, bang, that's right. But imagine that but like dialled up to 10. And that is Australians are quite patriotic. And anyway, they don't need this. And the country doesn't have the sort of social problems that Britain has with with elements of the Muslim community have just gone off the reservation and completely lost their mind. We haven't had 40 People blown up on, you know, at a rock concert or anything like this. That's not something that has happened to Australia because of the way it's managed its immigration intake. Well, this is the other thing that I wanted to ask you about with Abbott here. His certainly the coalition's policy on immigration is often something that's touted by the right in British politics as being an effective, demonstrable way to control illegal immigration. Did Abbott do an awful lot on immigration? No credit for the very good immigration policy and this is where I could sort of move segue onto the next point. The man who stopped the boat although you must remember there have been not be. The immigration policy in Australia is bipartisan. Mandatory Detention was introduced in 1990 by Paul Keating, a Labour Prime Minister. The chipping away at the Refugee Convention until it was eventually destroyed doesn't apply to Australia have countries advocated it, not officially, it's not gonna happen soon, we hate your international law gets stuffed, but it doesn't operate. That process was started and greatly accelerated while Paul Keating was prime minister as a Labour Prime Minister. Basically, because Australia has the largest proportion of its population born in foreign countries and of the most diverse sort, it's by far the peculiar historical exception of Israel. But you have to remember that the people in Israel or Jews, the Australian settlement has been we will do all this mass migration. But there are just sort of the system is designed to force you into a cold room, everybody. And citizenship is this prize. It's done as a big ceremony like in the United States. This is where it resembles the United States. But it's done very beautifully. And Australian citizenship ceremony is a very beautiful thing. It doesn't focus so heavily on flags and singing and whatnot like the Americans do that typically they get a plant to take home, one of the very distinctive native varieties of eucalyptus with very unusual flowers and that kind of thing. But so the Australian settlement was very much based on we will do this system of mass migration, but we will do it our own way and on our own terms. So it's important to remember that the immigration system that someone like Priti Patel wants to copy is bipartisan in Australia, it is not just one party with the other started by Labour but continued by the other side. What Abbott was doing was focused very narrowly on terrorism. And it didn't really have much bearing on what was happening in immigration. Anyway. There was, however, a period while Kevin Rudd was prime minister, and this was part of his general problems he had with governance. And he didn't like the mandatory detention. He didn't like the offshore detention, he thought it was cruel. And he was coming out of that labour that intellectual labour tradition where people can kind of safely be sorry for migrants because that their main encounter, the main reason they have anything to do with with immigrants, as you know, an inexpensive nanny, they don't encounter a job competition, they don't encounter workplace competition like other people do. And so his background outside of the trade union movement really showed, and there was basically a period while he was Prime Minister, whether or not the caps weren't fully taken off, but it was it became clear that Australia had become a lot softer and the boat started up again. And the team will see is a lot more dangerous than the English Channel. And so they start drowning in large numbers, even when there was an attempt to rescue them and that kind of thing often that was too late. And it got that way that the actually know the individual who was involved in this that Labour Immigration Minister, right, who was one of the ones who helped spill it so that Gilad could become prime minister was lining up matches on his desk every time and each match represented five asylum seekers who drowned in the Timor Sea and he was lining them up in his desk and it was sending him around the twist. Basically, what happened when Abbott's took over his immigration minister Scott Morrison, whose name should be familiar to you on this the Segway, Scott Morrison stopped the boat. So all brought Australia back to what it had been. When John Howard and Paul Keating were Prime Minister, the boat stopped, and it required some really quite draconian authoritarian Yeah, and all those adverts that you see you will not make your home in Australia, you cannot get citizenship if you can. If you if you're an asylum seeker in those circumstances, you know, all of this legislation excising bits of the country out of what is known as the migration zone. Scott Morrison was the person who was behind that. And he was very successful at it, the boat stopped, the drowning stopped, and Australia just reverted to what had been the narrow rally attempt to rally that Abbott was doing was just about terrorism. It wasn't about immigration, it's seen as very, very separate things in Australia, given the picture that you've painted of Abbott has not been a particularly gracious prime minister to people on his own side. It's perhaps not very surprising that he didn't last very long. Well, no and I I was actually in Canberra when he was rolled out well, this is what I this is, this is this is what I wanted to ask you next, can you go into the events of September 2015? What was the sort of lead up to this spill? Well, basically, you'd have this relentless of relentless Negative government. And what had happened that there is a company in Australia called News poll, which is a little bit like the a combination of servation and YouGov. And it's a big polling company, it has a lot, and it has an exceptionally good reputation. Partly because voting is compulsory in Australia, polling is easier, because the there are three big unknowns for most in most democracies is, is the, one of those big unknowns is the person even going to vote once you support turnout, Australia doesn't have to worry about it only has to care about you know, who you're going to vote for. And as your sample representative, that's all they have to care about. They don't have to worry about turnout, because it's compulsory, and everybody votes if you don't get fined. And so, what had happened is that Tony Abbott had lost 30 News polls in a row, it was becoming quite clear, because there was going to be an election in 2016, it was becoming quite clear that he, if he went to the people who would lose, you'd lose government. And the coalition, like the Tories here have sort of two broad streams in them. They have the classical liberals who are kind of like the old liberals here, the Gladstone and liberals, who are economically really quite dry. That's the expression that's used in Australia, they're quite dry. They're the Let's trust such but they're socially, quite liberal. So pro same sex marriage, and, you know, they won't do affirmative action or anything like that. You don't get that quality. But yeah, promo were in the Parliament, and, you know, pro decriminalisation of cannabis or medical marijuana and those kinds of things. They're socially liberal. But the big issue in Australia, the big driving issue, the same sex marriage at the time. But the thing is the other part of the coalition and particularly people from the National Party, which overwhelmingly represents rural Australia, and also interestingly, a large number of aborigines people forget this, I think the Aborigines because they're black, and the indigenous people, they all have to be on the Labour Party side. But politics doesn't work quite the same way that they are a quite traditional community of many of the ones in the country are quite conservative, socially conservative, because they're still quite traditional, semi tribal people. And so what this what happened was that Malcolm Turnbull, who was this very, very capable, gifted lawyer and merchant banker, he's one of the he's like Rishi Sunak. So in terms of fabulously personally wealthy regularly was in the sort of top 100 People in the in, in Australia for personal wealth, very, very economically successful both as a barrister and as a merchant, Becky was very good at both. And he spoke so beautifully. He was this beautiful public speaker and he still is, I mean, he would get up in Parliament. And just like, you know, David Cameron wearing everybody at conservative conference without speaking, speaking without any notes, or because Turnbull had been a barrister for so long. He wasn't the kind of plodding barrister who depends on having really good written submissions, which is Kier, Starmer as approach his Dharma had a reputation for excellent written submissions. And as we've all seen, he's quite poor speaker. Turnbull could do both beautiful written submissions, but also the traditional old style, beautifully spoken barrister who didn't need notes and just had it all in his head. And so he just got fed up with all the constant losing of news polls. The relentless negative campaigning, the attempt to rally the Australian people around a form of patriotism that Australians really quite find quite offensive, you know, so basically, Abbott was doing these public speech speeches in the parliament. And people were starting to joke about how many flags there were behind it, because the number of flags was increasing. And Australians have the same thing as in Britain here. They're more patriotic will have demonstrably patriotic than British people, but they're not like Americans. And flag shagging of that sort, is frowned upon in Australia. I remember when I was a little girl in Queensland, which was a conservative and quite patriotic state, there was a man in my street who had a flagpole with the Australian flag on it, like Americans routinely do. And everybody in the street thought he was weird and wouldn't talk to him. Okay, so this is not something you do in Australia. It's considered over demonstrative and as the AVID was really pushing this and it just doesn't fly with Australians who are getting really pissed off and it didn't fly with Malcolm Turnbull. Who was personally very popular with a lot of people because of his beautiful speaking. And he's also like Avid, another Rhodes Scholar, also very clever, but just had this public speaking ability that from being a barrister of it wasn't a barrister. You know, it's just a different background. And so, what Turnbull did is he worked the numbers, this is what you have to do in the party room. It's called the party room for the coalition room or caucus for labour. So when, rather than Gilad, were playing off against each other. You have, you're dealing with the fight of the caucus with the coalition. It's in the party room. And remember, it went rad Gilad rad Because Ron came back to try to save the furniture from Abbott in 2013. And he said some of it skipped some of his marginals. So it's the party Britain for the coalition. And so Turnbull worked the numbers in the party room, and spilt Abbott and I remember the spill. No, I was in my senators rooms and all of the, the rooms in Parliament House are equipped with televisions we were in the corner of and there was sort of three officers, my senator had one and I had one and then the rest of them were junior staff was sort of shared two or three of them in another room. And one of the TV cameras was in my office. And we were all standing in my office just watching it. I set it up was there. And Turnbull came out and gave one of these incredibly fluent, beautiful speeches that he did, could do. And you're I will take Australia forward. And he was sort of making the case for conservative economic policies, because avid because of that Catholic tradition was more inclined to be a big spender. Turnbull was not a big spender. He wanted to cut the budget kept out. Yeah, but for sort of a Liz truss type figure, it's almost like it's almost like it's almost like a comparison between the editorial pages of the FT versus the Daily Mail, or something like that, or the Daily Express t versus the Tory graph. Remember, you have a better educated, more politically literate population. So the the telegraph, basically. And so Turnbull did this, and he was more simpatico with my senator, they will friend somebody Turnbull at various points would ring me up and say, Oh, can I come around, chat to your Senator, you know, chat to you, because I had some I've been quite successful as a novelist. And at one point, he came around to office with copies of my novels and said, Can I Can you sign them for me, please? Dear Prime Minister, yes, I signed the novels, this kind of thing. And he was always wonderfully smooth and courteous, and so on and so forth. But underneath that, and this is where we go to the next thing and how to Scott Morrison become prime minister. Despite his giftedness and his wonderful speaking ability, Turnbull had many of the same character flaws, as Kevin Rudd, you know, he'd never, ever had people just say, No, you're wrong, and then argue him into the ground. You know, he'd always been so much cleverer and so much more able than all the people around it, he just expected deference. And so he wasn't good on when there was going to be arguments both within his own party room. And this particularly emerged over same sex marriage, and also with the crossbench once again, and I just remember David being so disappointed by Senator after the first few months of Turnbull thinking, that's going to be an improvement, this will get better now, we're not gonna have these idiot coalition, making me promises, taking my vote, and then chopping the off at the socks, like the endless story and this happen with various things. But that's what I remember really well. And it didn't mean proof, you still had these terrible problems with negotiation. And the and the one shining exception to that, who was very good at negotiating, who understood that he had to work with people who disagreed with him on a principle basis. And who could talk to the prospect the Senate crossbench that people who weren't from either of the two big parties, and also talk to labour, the Scott Morrison, Scott Morrison could do that he had those skills. And that is why when Turnbull was eventually spelt, he was spelt by Morris. If we, if we look at this sort of era of Liberal government, then I actually I asked you something else. First, I want to crack this because this is a podcast mostly about controversial politicians. And I think the thing that Abbott has become quite controversial for not only in Australia, but particularly in the rest of the western world is are these allegations of misogyny is amateur misogynist. No, I don't think he is. I just think he's very rude to everybody. It's rude to everyone. And I have to say part of the problem for women in Australian political culture is the brutality of it means you have to toughen up And I am not persuaded by all these various feminist attempts to be kind, and to not say mean words, and so on and so forth, because in the end, they're just words. And I have. I actually went on Newsnight in 2017 because they wanted me to talk about Australian politics. And I was finished up talking about talking with some person from the Women's Equality Party who was trying to turn it everything, including the House of Commons, which is much polite, and then Australia, by the way, into sort of some cream teas. And that is not the way it works. Congress in the United States, is beautifully polite. They are gorgeously polite, all of them. There are far fewer women there. But also Congress is Toothless. The real power in the United States is the Supreme Court, as we have just seen with Reverend Wade. Whereas the reason debates are lively in the House of Commons and even livelier in the House of Representatives in Australia is because that is the field of real political contestation. And if you can't handle being called a nasty name, or very, very robust disagreement, which to be fair is a problem that MIT can have Kevin Rudd had it and so did Malcolm Turnbull. Then public life is not for you. So this is not an argument that I accept. What I do accept is that he Abbott was relentlessly negative, relentlessly rude. And he would take people for granted as he did to my own senator, my own senator was a man from the country at country, large animal veterinarian before he was elected, you know, so not a, you couldn't get anybody more rural and rustic and hardy than my senator, and he objected to having his vote taken for granted. As much as any woman MP or Senator would. It was just this persistent bad behaviour. And as well, this this, of course, led to the famous misogyny speech from Julia Gillard in the House of Representatives in I think 2012, you take a fairly dim view of that speech. No, I don't take it in view of the speech. It was an excellent piece of rhetoric, but you must remember, it was not some simultaneous drafting. It was all it was all drafted beforehand by her speechwriter. And I mean, I know how these systems work because I used to draft my massive speeches for him. And one of the things the elegant one of the things that was actually thrown at my senator when he hired me if you hire an award winning writer, Paul Keating did so with another award winning writer back when when he was Prime Minister, he hired a chap called Don Watson. And the comments in the Australian press when David Lyon helm hired a Miles Franklin award winner was Oh, you just want the nicest speeches because you get an award winning writer to write your speeches for you. And Julia, Gilad had a very good speech right, right now, I'm not gonna say his name because he's not been disclosed. But he, he was a very good speech writer, and she delivered a very good speech. But this whole school of feminism that turns on mean words, and don't call me that, and so on and so forth. I have no time for I think it is nonsense. And I think women need to get over it. And the failure to get over it, this whole desire to control people's speech and language has, and I'll just make a tiny, one sentence diversion come has come back a bit and feminism in the bottom, because now they're suddenly discovering that the trans activists who disagree with them are saying, Oh, well, all right. You know, we're going to change the language again and make it suit us. And feminists are being placed in the position of all the old golf club balls who didn't want to say chairperson they'd prefer to say, Chairman, and is that all of this is just nonsense, in my view, complete and utter whining nonsense, and I have no track with it. From if I can just play that game. If I can just come in there. There's there's quite a famous video for instance of Abbott's in a call in a radio call in where he there's a an elderly woman that calls into the radio station that Abbott's taking the calls, and she's a poor woman and she's resorting to telephone sex work, I think to pay her bills. And Abbott, I presume doesn't think that he's on camera and he sort of winks over his at his advisor in this very lavish way. I mean, that's not just kind of that's not whinging nonsense really is that's that's that's a pretty foul thing to do. Well, I mean, also he did with a I soldiers family and the man that just I'm not familiar with the incident you describe, but the incident that I'm most familiar with is the soldiers family, man, it just been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan or something like that. And habits response was, I don't know if they're allowed to swear on here, but Abbott's zone would have shipped thing to happen or some or something. And it was just totally tinny and landing your foot right in the booth. and he did this routinely? Absolutely. This is not what you say to the family of a man has just been killed in action, you just don't. Likewise, the behaviour on the radio station if it's, as you described this, this, that he would do this repeatedly, you know, it was part of this general culture of negativity, rudeness and flat and then behind the negativity and the rudeness was the constant flag shagging, which didn't exist as a word, then I'm using it now because it's a useful useful term for British politics. And people on both sides, do it, periodically get the Tories with with it, but then you had all those ridiculous P O torches? Yeah, with the painted faces, the blue stars, and I'm just sitting there and going, my God, you're British versions of Tony Abbott. That's what I thought I remember sitting there thinking, your British versions of Tony Abbott, who you're all completely embarrassing, stop it. But that is what Abbott would do. He would just do it all the time. It was relentless. And he would be rude to people, he would be publicly rude to people or so and so on and so forth in this extraordinary way. And it just, it just made it brought the office down the office of Prime Minister and it had its roots in this continued desire to try to govern from opposition to behave as prime minister, as he had when he was campaigning to to be elected. And you don't do that you that that's not the way a parliamentary system works. You have to govern for the country once you're elected. I just have a couple more questions for you. It's about Australian politics more generally, since Abbott left. If you look at the three prime ministers that the liberals had in the 2013 to 22 era, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison. Is there one in particular that you think the Liberals look back on or will look back on now, now that they're out of power? And think I wish we'd given him a little bit longer? Probably not realistically, I think all three of them were seriously flawed. Even though Morrison was a good negotiator and an excellent immigration minister. He was also an example of the Peter Principle, he kept getting promoted and promoted and promoted until he was finally promoted to a position where he wasn't good enough. And that was the position of Prime Minister. Now obviously, COVID it's really awful. He got elected in 2019. And got and there's only three year terms in Australia. And instantly last two years have gone got, you know, was not able to do any, anything in the in what he taken to the people in 2019. So that's very unfortunate. For Morrison perhaps Morrison might have shown in normal times that he'd have been a good Prime Minister that the same argument obtains, I think, with Boris Johnson, perhaps in normal times, Boris Johnson within an excellent Prime Minister optimistic and take the country forward government from the centre and let but then COVID came along and it blew up all over him. This, it also blew up all over Morrison, although less seriously, because Australia responded to COVID far more effectively than pretty much anywhere. But I honestly don't think the LIBS are going to look back on any of those people with a great deal of form. And I think they're going to form this they're going to sit there and Labour will as well because of the Rudd Gilad Rudd thing where you had six if you count Rob, twice, you had six Prime Ministers in eight years, where Australia turned into Italy with crocodiles. It was ridiculous. I mean, it was it became so ridiculous that I mean, you have this with the NHS as well. We have paramedics who Australian system is different, but it's a universal health care system. And one of the things a paramedic asks you if you've been concussed at a football game or something like that, is they asked you who's the Prime Minister, you know, to see whether whether you get to have a proper yellow out but paramedics in Australia could not ask that question, because the country kept changing Prime Ministers so regularly that they had to come up with other questions like they are in New South Wales and Queensland that they had to ask who won the latest latest state of origin which is the rugby league between the two states in Victoria and South Australia and Western Australia that have to ask who won the flag, which is the Australian football Australian rules football competition. They couldn't ask who's the Prime Minister anymore because we'd had six prime ministers and 80 It was ridiculous. And I called it a piece of journalism I call it a country's turned into Italy with crocodiles. And yet weirdly, underneath it all you have this prosperous, orderly Well, country that continued to run as it should be. Well, these people you know, knife knife knife again. This is sad. This is what I wanted to ask you as a final question and sort of sort of building through this sort of 15 a year or so year period that we've been looking at. The UK is now about to choose its third Prime Minister in six years, so it's almost getting lost. Aliah territory. Yeah, Britain is not as well governed country as Australia. I don't think no, that's Do you? Do you think that a country like the UK, which has a much much poorer level of political education, economic prosperity, do you think that Britain can cope with the sorts of destabilisation of the Conservative Party leadership that we're seeing? I don't know. I hope so. But it does worry me because the instability is in both sides of politics. I mean, Kier. Starmer has not got control of labour either from those all those Maddies that were elected with court, either elected into into the parliamentary party or are still the membership. And the Tories have got about 200,000 members labour, obviously, they've got up to about 450,000 because of Corbyn and a lot of those have left, but they still have many more members in the Tories, they still have something like 300,000, a massive amount of members. And many of those are the ones that joined as a result of Corbin. So we've got like serious structural instability at the top of both the major parties in this country, meaning in the UK, because I live here now. And you don't have the governance underneath it that Australia has. And to be fair to Australia first Morrison served out his full term, okay, COVID fine, he lost the election probably as a result of COVID. But to be expected, lots of people have lost elections as a result of COVID. But Albanese the New Labour Prime Minister has taken over and he is from that union tradition, that the same sort of tradition that gave us Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, he's very competent, he's very steady, he's quite dull. He's not a flamboyant man. But he is written reverted back to that Australian to tradition, John Howard, Paul Keating, a very competent, stable steady governance. So basically, you've got the civil service, which is called public service in Australia, and the parliamentarians and the Prime Minister, regardless of party lining up again, in that sort of competence Steady, steady on the tiller kind of way. So Australia has gone back to what it was after that weird period of Italy with crocodiles, which I've lived through a significant part of it. And at the time, I thought it was completely bonkers. And looking back on it, now, I still find it completely bonkers. Whereas over here, you've got that instability in both the major parties like Australia had, and regardless of who is in government, you're going to have that instability. And the UK underneath, you've got this thing. It's an American term that is brought over here. But there is some truth in it, you've got this problem with the blob, Australia doesn't have a blob. You find blob, you know, for my listeners, as in, you've just got lots and lots of people in the civil service, and in the crime got cracy. And you've also got this weird phenomenon of the government providing funding to charities that they then use that money to lobby the government is completely mad, you have to you should you need to stop this, it's just mad to strip the I mean, half the reason stonewalls is behaves as it does is because it gets state money. Usually none of these charities should be begin given money by the government. You know, the whole point of a charity is that so that ordinary members of the public can put their hand in their pocket and give their money to the charity to do what the charitable thing that they like. And if there are people out there who want to put their hand in their pocket, give it to Stonewall or give it to the LGB. Alliance, because those two are opposed. And that's great, but neither of them should be getting any money from the government. You know, this is completely mad, and that's what produces it, and all of these people, but they transform everything into process. And they don't care about outcomes. And it's just snouts in the trough for all of them. And you don't actually have to produce anything. And they don't actually do very much. They're not any good for anything. And it's just pervasive all through the Civil Service. And the other thing I've noticed, and I noticed a bit of this, even when I was at Oxford, you don't make a maths subject compulsory, all the way through to the final year of high school. Now, you can't go to a good university in Australia, unless you have a maths pass. And you need a pretty good one too, because those universities are quite hard to get into to the equivalent of a level. And one of the things I noticed during the COVID pandemic, was all your journalists who've all obviously stopped their maths, GCSE, they're just innumerate. You can't get away with that data and understand the graph. You can't read a graph. I couldn't ask intelligent questions of it. I have watched multiple press conferences with people from the Canberra press As calorie across the political spectrum, left wing, right wing, left wing doesn't really matter because Australia like he has different newspapers and and media outlets and so on representing different strands of politics. The idiot COVID questions that you saw from places that should know better like the BBC, Scott Morrison didn't get a single one during the entire pandemic like that from the press gallery in Canberra. And that's how the blob gets away with a lot of the things that it does is because you've got all these people who can't do sums. And all these people in government who can't do sums. And then when you do get a couple of individuals, and the two who stood out and the conservative leadership were actually can be bad, and I can Rishi Sunak. Although they disagreed with each other. It's very clear they can do sometimes both of them. And the thing is Sunak used to work in finance and bad and rock was an engineer. So of course, they they did do them at a levels, obviously. And it shows in the way they argue, and that's why Sunak has made the argument about I'm sorry, I'm not going to make uncrossed promises. So therefore I will stick taxes up, you could disagree with him about that and argue that, you know, the problem is you're going to kill make the economic recovery from COVID stillborn, which is the trusses argument. But the point is he does actually have a serious mathematical and financial point when he he argues that now you can hear me talking like an Ozzy because this is the way Australian journalists and Australian commentators will talk about issues. People just don't do that here. And so now you've got this instability at the top of government, you've got relatively few people who are numerous there are more in the Tories than there are in labour, but there are still not enough. You have lots of people in the civil service in the Congo cracy people who haven't done any mess since they were 15. And this is not good for the country. And so this to me, is that the root of my concern about your instability, ideological, serious ideological conflict, particularly in labour, and you get the blue on blue, we want power with the Tories pulling great tufts of fear out of each other. And poor governance underneath it. So yes, this does worry me. I don't know where it's going to lead or what's going to happen. But I think there are a lot of other countries have it as well. I mean, you can just see a lot of the European leaders. I will look at Merkel with her energy policy. Talk about completely destroyed legacy, absolutely destroyed legacy there. With the gone war in Ukraine. And yes, just six months, six months, the entire legacy has just been burned to the ground. Well, I was reading today about about Gerhard Schroder as well. I mean, he is he's an utter pariah in German politics now has been here recently. You know, this entire legacy, even more than Merkel's has been to the ground. But I mean, he is actually a tool of Gazprom and Nord Stream, you know, it's just a waffle. Ordinary behaviour. So, yes, you're in trouble. This is a serious problem. And I live here, I chose to live here. So I work in the British press. Well, it's now it's not too late to go back. I mean, not that I want you to. In certain respects, it is easier for me to live here because of the British family. This is the thing that produces this loyalty to Britain, and Tony Abbott, Hannity was born here. But a more famous in an international sense example, was Australia's greatest writer and only Nobel Prize winner for literature. Patrick white, was born in the UK, and as a dual national just like me, I'm just like Tony Abbott. This is a very common phenomenon. And then there's been a very colourful, wide ranging conversation. Thank you. That was great. I really enjoyed that. Okay, cheers. Is there before you go? Where can people find your work? Well, I'm a senior writer for Law and Liberty, which is a magazine run by Liberty Fund, which is one of these ridiculously wealthy and endowed American think tanks. I mean, I made a decision that I would not write for a newspaper. If I was offered a staff job I would not write for a newspaper that might go bust. I mean, there were sort of various attempts to recruit me and when Liberty fund came along, I said yes to them because they they have what's called What friend of mine calls fuck off money. So I'm seeing you write for them and I do a feature for them one or two features for them every month. I write for various other outlets once again, mainly tied to the world of think tanks. So cap x is Centre for Policy Studies. My one of my novels was launched the Adam Smith Institute. I mean I'm broadly speaking on that sort of centre right sort of the list trust wing of the Tory party basically. Although every I recognise that liberal Tories like me and like Liz truss, if you haven't got the sort of background like Malcolm Turnbull had as a barrister and you do finish up coming across as one kid shear the person who's had a personality bypass that kind of thing, quite statistics that people all day but not be very interesting. So you can find all my work at Lauren liberty and there's an author archive there you can find all my work capex and of policy studies, there's an archive there, I write a lot and I covered Brexit in a great deal of detail on for a period there I had to like write every week on this issue. I have a Brexit for the Australian as well, which is the country's main national dailies I was basically reporting back to Australia what was happening in Britain. I've also written at various times for the spectator for the telegraph, you know, the usual kind of sort of right leaning media, but because of the the tradition I come from, which is in Britain is the liberal tourism in Australia, the senator that I worked for, among other things, he was involved in cannabis legalisation, that kind of thing. I've also written for The Guardian and those kinds of places, but it tends to be on the social issues like, like drugs. And I have to admit, since 2016, there used to be a spot for kind of that liberal Tory in The Guardian and the left leaning media, and that has become less and less and less even when we agree that the silo effect I call it where the political tribes are just talking to themselves and not talking to each other at all, has just become greatly exaggerated, worse and worse every year in my experience. Alan, thank you very much. So yes, you can find all that stuff there. It's all out there. Cheers. Cheers. 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