TRANSCRIPT OF THE HON MALCOLM TURNBULL MP
INTERVIEW WITH ELLEN FANNING
OBSERVER EFFECT, SBS
Subjects: Asylum Seeker Policy, Climate Change Policy, Wikileaks, Federal Election
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ELLEN FANNING:
Malcolm Turnbull, thank you so much for being my guest.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Great to be with you.
ELLEN FANNING:
I’ve been reading speeches you have been giving lately and you seem to be on something of a crusade. You talk about the urgent need for honesty, for candor in public debate and you have been railing against the dumbing‑down of complex issues.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Not railing.
ELLEN FANNING:
Not railing.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Not railing, just ‑ just pointing it out.
ELLEN FANNING:
Quietly agitating. I wondered, though, are you in the wrong business?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
No, I’m not. I actually think that dumbing everything down into the 10‑second sound bite is an attempt, it’s a patronising attempt to communicate to the common man. Now, that’s what it’s all about. It is ‑ it is smart people dumbing down their messages because they think that will communicate with Struggle Street.
I don’t think it respects Struggle Street. I think it holds it in contempt and I think people increasingly look at those ‑ at the dumbing down and the, you know, the simple ‑ the oversimplification of problems as indicating actually less intelligence on the part of politicians. I think part of our job as politicians is to explain things, and I try very hard always to explain the complex issues. I don’t always do a very good job, I must say, but I certainly try to explain things –
ELLEN FANNING:
Well –
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Rather than dumb them down.
ELLEN FANNING:
Well, you gave an example of a speech recently and you were talking about the spectacle of Wayne Swan, the Treasurer, maintaining that he could produce a budget surplus when he clearly couldn’t, and you asked, “Wouldn’t a more nimble and candid Treasurer have said, ‘You asked me to guarantee a surplus. Well, if you can guarantee the exchange rate, the growth rate, the price of iron ore and coal, not to speak of the pace of recovery in the US and Europe, I could think about it’.” Now, are we really ever going to see a Treasurer answer a question with that sort of candour.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, why wouldn’t ‑ why wouldn’t he? Because, you know something, everyone ‑ everyone in every lounge room, in every pub, in every club, in every coffee shop and every street in Australia would have nodded and said, “Well, that’s obvious.”
ELLEN FANNING:
Wouldn’t everybody write, “Weasel words. Dreadful weasel words. Won’t say what he really thinks”, wouldn’t that be the result of that sort of talk? In a way ‑ ‑ ‑
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, do you ‑ do you ‑ just think ‑ just stop there, Ellen. (Ellen laughs). Do you think that maybe ‑ do you think maybe just a few people might write down, “He’s telling the truth”? I think if you want to be an effective communicator in politics or anywhere else for that matter, you have got to be ‑ treat your audience with respect and that means telling them the truth; and if there is ambiguity, complexity, variability, then explain it.
I mean, one of the things I often talk about is the challenges of leadership and making decision in times of uncertainty when you simply don’t know what the future holds. And, you know, some people may yearn for certainty, they may yearn to be told that in 25 years’ time this is exactly what will be happening. Well, you know, if you believe that, you no doubt think you have got fairies at the bottom of the garden too.
ELLEN FANNING:
Well, let’s start with the news of the week and we’ll start with Kevin Rudd’s plan to stop the boats.
KEVIN RUDD [Recording]:
From now on, any asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees. Asylum seekers taken to Christmas Island will be taken to Manus and elsewhere in Papua New Guinea for assessment of their refugee status. If they are found to be genuine refugees, they’ll be resettled in Papua New Guinea. If they are found not to be genuine refugees, they may be repatriated to their country of origin or be sent to a safe third country other than Australia.
ELLEN FANNING:
Now, Kevin Rudd famously said he wouldn’t lurch to the right on asylum seekers. Is that what he’s done?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
(Laughing). Yeah, well, I guess so, yes. I think he’s ‑ I’m not sure what he meant “by lurching to the right”, but that is certainly, as he said, a very, very hardline policy. I think if John Howard had introduced a policy of that kind, there would have been ‑ the Labor Party would have been frothing with indignations and accusations of inhumane activity on the part of John Howard.
ELLEN FANNING:
At the same time Tony Abbott has said for years now that he will stop the boats. Has he been trumped by Kevin Rudd here?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, no, don’t think so. I think the real ‑ let’s, as you know, the Coalition has welcomed this move by the PNG Government.
ELLEN FANNING:
Do you welcome it?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
I ‑ I do. I think ‑ well, I do welcome it. The big question mark, though, you have got to raise is why do we imagine that Kevin Rudd and Labor and, of course, it’s not ‑ you know, Labor is trying to present itself as a one‑man band, it is not. It is has been a very dysfunctional and inept government driven by deep and bitter personal animosities.
ELLEN FANNING:
This is the political ‑ potentially the political masterstroke from Kevin Rudd that leaves Tony Abbott without the ability to say the Australian people, “I am the only person who can stop the boats.”
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, we don’t ‑ you know, he’s got to stop them first. Labor’s track record of managing anything is very poor and, you know, this is a ‑ this is a very important point. You put your finger on a very, very critical issue. You know, often elections are about policies and that’s legitimate but there is a very big issue about capacity of management because so do –
ELLEN FANNING:
So it’s no longer who’s got the better plan.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, do you trust the Labor –
ELLEN FANNING:
You’ve conceded the point that apparently this is the better plan –
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
No.
ELLEN FANNING:
– This is the plan.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
No, I’m not saying it’s a better plan. I’m saying it is a plan that if properly executed and managed in accordance with the promise so that anyone who got into a boat ended up in PNG and was resettled in PNG, I think that would be very likely to have a very significant impact on the arrival of boats.
ELLEN FANNING:
Would it stop the boats?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
I think it is very likely. I don’t think if you ‑ if it was absolutely clear that if you paid $5,000 to a people smuggler, you ended up in PNG rather than Australia, don’t think many people would be paying to do that. So I think it has the potential of being very effective, but ‑ and this is a huge “but” ‑ can the Labor Party manage it?
ELLEN FANNING:
I just want to ask you: what do you personally think of the idea? As you say, it’s a hardline policy of sending people to an island, to Manus Island, where the facility there has been condemned as substandard by the UN High Commissioner for refugees, in a country with a murder rate that rivals Sierra Leone.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, it is ‑ it is a very cruel policy, what Kevin Rudd is proposing is extremely cruel, but all of the policies to deal with the people smuggling, you know, problem are to some extent cruel. Some are crueller than others. They’re all harsh ‑ it’s a very ‑ but the problem that we face, Ellen, is that Kevin Rudd dismantled a set of policies, which are much less harsh than this by the way, much less harsh, that John Howard had in place that had succeeded in stopping the boats in the sense there were no boats coming, or virtually none, he undid that despite our pleas not to, and it’s a very interesting point of history because Kevin Rudd believed, he said, that the only thing that affects the rate of arrivals was the state of discord and unrest in the other countries, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and so forth, and that Australia’s domestic policy is ‑ was irrelevant.
Now, I was the leader of the opposition at the time and I remember saying to him in Parliament many times, “We concede that the push factors vary from massive to very massive, but they’re always massive; and the only thing that affects the rate of arrivals is, in fact, our domestic policy, the pool factors, and it’s like a gate valve. You open it up, and you will get more and more and more, and this is ‑ anyway, Kevin Rudd had this social ‑ we’ve had this social science experiment at the expense of hundreds of lives, billions of dollars and, of course, thousands of unauthorised arrivals.
And so you know, this very harsh and cruel policy that he has announced with PNG is the consequence of his unpicking a much more measured approach back in John Howard’s day.
ELLEN FANNING:
You clearly ‑ there’s some agreement there. Talk to me about the coalition’s policy, the centrepiece of which seems to be sending back the boats on the high seas towards Indonesia. Just have a look at what the Indonesian Foreign Minister had to say this week.
INDONESIAN FOREIGN MINISTER MARTY NATALEGAWA [Recording]:
We have said when the Prime Minister was in Indonesia recently and met with our president, we are not in a position to support any type of unilateral measures that can cause operational implications to countries of the region. On the contrary what we wish to see is a more cooperative regional framework type of approach.
ELLEN FANNING:
So what he’s talking about there is he doesn’t want to see unilateral action by an Abbott Government in which you turn back boats, regardless of Indonesia’s approach to that. I mean, is it ever going to be safe given that attitude for Australia to turn back the boats.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, let’s be quite clear what we’re talking about here. I mean, there are a lot ‑ there are many risks associated with turning back boats, you know, these are not seaworthy vessels; there are risks that people sabotaging the boats, we’ve already had an incidence of that; there are, you know, questions as to whether the boat ‑ how seaworthy the boat is; you can only board it lawfully if it’s ‑ assuming it’s not in distress, you can only board it lawfully and be in a position to turn it around when it’s in Australian territorial waters.
ELLEN FANNING:
There’s a lot of ifs.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
No, no, I agree, Ellen, and I’m not disguising that. I’m saying it is a very difficult challenging and potentially dangerous policy to implement, but from a point of view of Indonesia, if the boat is escorted back to the edge of the Indonesian territorial waters, and then left with enough fuel to get back to Indonesia but no further, they are Indonesian flag vessels, they’re Indonesian-crewed vessels, the Indonesian Government can’t ‑ they may prefer that it not happen, but they cannot ‑ they have got no lawful or diplomatic complaint.
So, yes, everyone would like a cooperative scheme, but the problem we have got ‑ I tell you, the problem we have got is that the rate of people smuggler vessels has become so great. We have virtually an armada of customs vessels and naval vessels working around the clock rescuing people; the people smugglers will get, you know, not very far off the ‑ the shore of Java just outside Indonesian territorial waters and call Australian Search ‑ Search and Rescue, even if their boat is not in distress …
ELLEN FANNING:
But I don’t ‑ I don’t think the problem is in dispute.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
– It’s a catastrophe. So you have got to ask yourself, you know, it’s the old story, we have got ‑ the only thing we haven’t got a shortage of with this problem is bad options.
ELLEN FANNING:
Okay. So just finally briefly on this point. Who has the better option now? What’s the Coalition’s position? That you’ll adopt Labor’s policy on this, that you’ll take up the Manus Island option or that you’ll persist with turning back the boats which has a lot of ifs attached …
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well –
ELLEN FANNING:
And probably is unlikely to happen in many circumstances if at all.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, Ellen, what I think you ‑ I think what you want to do from an operational point of view is keep all your options open and not put all your eggs in one basket.
ELLEN FANNING:
So take everybody’s policy, do everything.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, why would you deprive yourself of any one option because what happens if the PNG solution, if that’s the right term, if that turns out to be no solution? If that turns out ‑ if, for example, the internal political opposition in PNG makes it unable to be executed; if, you know, there are the facilities at Manus Island can’t be rectified quickly enough; if ‑ you know, I mean, this is a very, very complex measure.
I mean, Kevin Rudd had got the headline but he’s like ‑ remember Harry M Miller once defined a ‑ you know, defining himself in a self‑deprecating way, he said, “Malcolm, I’m the great” ‑ “I’m like a great entrepreneur: After the big idea, I lose interest”, and I think Kevin Rudd is a bit like that. After the big headline, he loses interest and doesn’t do the follow‑up.
ELLEN FANNING:
All right. I hope we can keep the audience with us and they don’t lose interest on this next one. Climate change, stay with us. (Audience laughing). You have been such an advocate for action on this issue. I want to start by playing you a clip that went viral this week because I think you might relate to how the star of this video is feeling. It’s Dinky, the singing dingo. Have a look.
(Dinky the dingo howling to piano music)
MAN:
Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you, Dinky.
ELLEN FANNING:
Well done, Dinky. Okay, when they play that terrible piano, Dinky howls, and my question is, are there days when you listen to the climate change debate in Australia it’s so discorded you want to Howl.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
I go ‑ I’m even worse than Dinky, sometimes I want to bite people.
ELLEN FANNING:
Who did you want to bite this week?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Nobody. No, I’m only kidding.
ELLEN FANNING:
Did you want to bite –
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Just a nip.
ELLEN FANNING:
Just a nip.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Just a little nip every now and again.
ELLEN FANNING:
And did you want to nip Tony Abbott for talking about invisible emissions or Kevin Rudd for talking about dismantling the carbon tax. Let’s have a reminder of what they were both saying this week.
KEVIN RUDD [Recording]:
The Government has decided to terminate the carbon tax to help cost of living pressures for families and to reduce costs for small business.
TONY ABBOTT:
Just ask yourself what an emissions trading scheme is all about. It’s a market, a so‑called market, in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no‑one.
ELLEN FANNING:
Okay. I’ll put you through it again: Who did you want to nip more that time?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, I think –
ELLEN FANNING:
Tony or Kevin?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, let me ‑ perhaps –
ELLEN FANNING:
Start with Kevin.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Perhaps I should ‑ I shouldn’t nip anymore. Be more ‑ I should be a discreet dingo, but the ‑ so what’s the question?
ELLEN FANNING:
Well, the question is ‑ (audience laugh) ‑ where to start? Has Kevin terminated –
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Is carbon dioxide an invisible substance?
ELLEN FANNING:
All right. Let’s start with that?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
No, it’s not.
ELLEN FANNING:
It’s not an –
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
No, it is visible. Tony’s chemistry ‑ he slipped up on his chemistry there.
ELLEN FANNING:
Did he?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Mmm, but that’s all right. I think it was a ‑ he wasn’t trying to be ‑ give a chemical opinion, he was being rhetorical and he was criticise ‑ and, look …
ELLEN FANNING:
Speaking of dogs, was he dog whistling …
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
No.
ELLEN FANNING:
I mean, that was the interpretation that the only way to interpret that is that Tony Abbott is still thinks that climate change is absolute crap. I mean, that is ‑ that is one reading of what he said.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, I don’t think ‑ I’m sure that’s not right, and it’s certainly not the party’s policy, and, I mean, you know –
ELLEN FANNING:
But how ‑ how else ‑ to be fair –
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Look, look –
ELLEN FANNING:
How else would you interpret it?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, carbon dioxide –
ELLEN FANNING:
What was it: A so‑called market in a non-deliverable –
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Is not visible to the human eye in gaseous state, but if you lower the temperature to 78 and a‑half ‑ minus 78 and a‑half degrees celsius, it becomes dry ice. So, of course, it is ‑ it is a real substance and it is visible even to the human eye at least when it’s frozen, so.
ELLEN FANNING:
So perhaps he needs a chemistry lesson in the Shadow Cabinet room.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, you can’t be an expert on everything.
ELLEN FANNING:
Have your bunsen burner ‑ no, you wouldn’t want that. You’d freeze it down –
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
You can’t ‑ you can’t –
ELLEN FANNING:
–and then say –
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
You can’t --
ELLEN FANNING:
“Now watch closely Tony, here we go.” (Audience clapping).
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
You can’t be ‑ I think ‑ I think what Tony ‑ I think the point that Tony ‑ Tony has been a critic of emissions trading as a mechanism for reducing emissions and he is not alone in that.
ELLEN FANNING:
And you have been the great champion of it. I mean, you sacrificed your Liberal leadership over that very point.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
I have been a supporter of it, that is true. I have always favoured, you know, market‑based mechanisms, but I have to say in all candour, being honest, that emissions trading schemes have worked better so far in theory than in practice.
I’d love to tell you that everything was rosy in the European emissions trading scheme market, but it would be disingenuous to do so. As I said, the people like Tony Abbott who are very sceptical about the effectiveness of emissions trading schemes have got a point. They do have a point, and it’s ‑ you are the ‑ and as I said, the balance, I guess, is to say, do we learn from the lessons of the poorly designed schemes and design them better; or do you say, it’s all too ‑ those schemes are too hard, let’s have more direct action measures, and that is what ‑ that’s the policy of the party at present.
ELLEN FANNING:
We’ll take a break and be right back with Malcolm Turnbull to find out where his self‑belief and confidence come from. And you can join the conversation on line using #observersbs or find us on Facebook. We’ll be right back.
SEGMENT TWO
ELLEN FANNING:
There was a reminder, I think, of your past or at least an echo of it this week with the WikiLeaks case, I thought. I mean, it looks more and more likely that the US soldier Bradley Manning, the young fellow who leaked hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents to the website, will spend his life in jail; and the principle seems to have been developed or is being developed that if you leak documents to a public website or, God forbid, a newspaper it now counts as aiding the enemy because the bad guys could be surfing the Net or reading the newspaper.
REPORTER [Recording]:
Manning’s trial Judge has ruled the charge of aiding the enemy will stand. It carries a life sentence without parole. Manning’s lawyers argued that when he leaked thousands of military documents he didn’t know they would be seen online. The Judge ruled Manning’s military training meant he would have known the seriousness of leaking secrets and by doing so he was assisting the enemy.
ELLEN FANNING:
Okay. So you famously won the Spycatcher case. The former MI‑5 officer, Peter Wright, spilled the beans in a book and he revealed, in the middle of the Cold War, or towards end of the Cold War, the electronic techniques of MI‑5, many of their secrets, and the British Government wanted to ban it. There’s you and Peter Wright, the author of the book. So you were …
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
“Look at all of that black hair”, he said wistfully (looking at a photo of himself and Peter Wright on background screen).
ELLEN FANNING:
You’re thinner now, though. You appear thinner.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
At least ‑ I have got more hair than Peter, but –
ELLEN FANNING:
You were the great advocate there for free speech. What do you think of Bradley Manning.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
I think there’s a couple of things. Peter Wright was not ‑ his case was that he was not revealing secrets. Our case was that there was nothing in Spycatcher that was not already in the public domain. So Peter Wright would not have sought to defend Bradley Manning. He said, “I’m publishing a book of my memoirs. It’s all very old stuff, it’s all in the public domain already. It doesn’t” ‑ you know, it’s not ‑ legal term: Doesn’t have the requisite element of confidence or character of confidence. So ‑ ‑ ‑
ELLEN FANNING:
Would you have been confident to defend Bradley Manning?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, as a lawyer, you’d defend anyone. Would I be confident of getting him ‑ (audience laughing) ‑ would I be confident in getting him an acquittal –
ELLEN FANNING:
Yes.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
I don’t think so. It does look as though they’re using a sledgehammer to crack a nut here, and I have to say that I think the bigger issue is the nature of their ‑ you know, nature of their security. The fact that so much material was able to be downloaded so easily by ‑ I mean, you know, you should not in any secure business, whether it is a Government department, let alone the military, or a bank or a law firm, you shouldn’t be able to put a foreign medium, you know, a thumb drive or a disk into a computer. I mean you should have a system ‑ pretty basic actually. I ‑ I’m ‑ what astonishes me most about the whole WikiLeaks thing is this young man was able to do what he did.
ELLEN FANNING:
Okay. You conducted that case, as we saw, with a ‑ with a full head of very dark hair, by which stage you had been a Rhodes scholar, a journalist, a very good journalist, you’re on your way to being a leading investment banker, and all this from a single‑parent household. It strikes me that you must have been, notwithstanding your own talents, the result of a very heroic bit of parenting from your father.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, my father was ‑ was very unusual as a single dad in this sense: he ‑ when my mother left us when I was, sort of, eight ‑ eight or nine, or close ‑ between eight and nine, she sort of left gradually, as it often happens, he was very careful never to criticise her and he praised her to the hilt at all times, even though she had gone off to live in New Zealand and then United States, and he did everything he could to ensure that we remain close.
He almost ‑ he effectively brainwashed me and it would have been so easy for him to do what people normally do in divorces and badmouth the other party because she hadn’t ‑ her conduct had not been particularly admirable in the sense that she sold the flat that we were living and, you know, took virtually all the furniture, so it was pretty ‑ it was unusual. You know, I mean, of course, you know, every woman watching this will say, “Men do this all the time, clear out and leave their children”, but it was unusual for mothers to do that and even more unusual then.
ELLEN FANNING:
But he was ‑ I remember reading somewhere that he was ‑ you found after he died he had been writing her these bitter, angry letters saying, “What do you think you’re doing?”
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
I wouldn’t say they were bitter. They were maybe ‑ I guess it’s an adjective but they were reproachful. They were very reproachful letters because I found them actually in her papers when she died.
ELLEN FANNING:
She’d kept them?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Yeah, she kept them. Interesting isn’t it? She actually ‑ she wanted ‑ when my mother was dying in Philadelphia where she was living, she ‑ and she was, you know, she was ‑ had a lot of, you know, drugs and, you know, people ‑ she was in a lot of pain and had a lot of pain‑killers and was drugged up a lot of the time, but at one point, she started talking about burning all her papers, and I have to say I packed them up, I don’t know that she would have ever been able to do it, but I packed them up, threw them all in a suitcase and stored them away and then after she died brought them back to Australia.
Because I didn’t want ‑ I felt I had missed enough of her in the flesh. I didn’t want to have, you know, even the written memories taken away. I didn’t want to miss out on the memories I never had as well as the memories that were on paper. And so I found those letters of my father and they were ‑ yeah, they were ‑ some were a bit angry, they were reproachful.
And what was remarkable reading those letters ‑ he had beautiful handwriting by the way, unlike me, I wish my handwriting was that good ‑ and reading them and then knowing he would write that letter, seal it up, post it and then go and present a completely alternative case to his son, and he was doing that all for my sake. And it was ‑ I mean, and it showed extraordinary forbearance.
ELLEN FANNING:
I want to take you to a 25‑year‑old piece of video that we dusted off from the SBS archive. It’s 1988. You’re 34 and you’ve been asked what lessons you learned from your father.
MALCOLM TURNBULL [Aged 34, Recording]:
If you believe in something, you stand up for it, you don’t get deflected by other people, you don’t crawl to people, you’re not sycophantic, you state your case firmly and politely, and then if people don’t like that, then so what.
(Audience laugh and clap)
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Yeah, that’s pretty right. Bruce always used to say ‑ look, he wasn’t ‑ you know ‑ you know, fathers give their sons, and their daughter of course, lots of advice; right? And you know the old story that when ‑ you know, a young man is ‑ is 18, he ‑ he’s just staggered at what a complete idiot his father is. Then ‑ then 10 years later he can’t believe how much his father had learned in the intervening decade. (Ellen laughing).
So ‑ but Bruce was ‑ yeah, Bruce was ‑ he had ‑ being straight, being very clear about, you know, what you stood for, and he often used to say, “Don’t take a backward step”, and he was very, very strong about independence, you know. He ‑ he prized independence very much. It was one ‑ one of the things …
ELLEN FANNING:
Independence of thought or action?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
All of the above.
ELLEN FANNING:
Right.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
But also ‑ one of the things that motivated me to, you know, make money, frankly, was not the desire to have, you know, millions and millions of dollars, and I’ve never ‑ it’s ‑ it was ‑ the desire was to be financially independent. So I was in a position –
ELLEN FANNING:
I mean, a lot –
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
So I was in a position where –
ELLEN FANNING:
Yeah.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
I didn’t have to work for someone else. Now, that was ‑ you know, that was my ‑ that was a big deal from my father’s point of view.
The ‑ you know, the big constraining thing with many people is a fear of failure, and that is one of the things you have got ‑ you know, there’s a number of things that you have got to drive out of yourself: You have got to drive out negative emotions. You know, hatred ‑ hatred destroys the hater more than the hated, you know. I don’t hate anyone, and I don’t know that I could have said that 25 years ago, but I’ve really ‑ I have got to the point of hopefully wisdom where I do not have negative feelings, antagonistic negative feelings about anyone. You know I –
ELLEN FANNING:
And is that –
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
I might disagree with someone –
ELLEN FANNING:
Yeah.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
And the reason for that is not a moral ‑ I mean, there’s a very good moral argument for it too, but from a practical survival point of view over the years I have seen so many people whose resentment, bitterness, hatred of others, consumes them, corrodes them.
Then the other thing ‑ the other thing that, you know, it’s terribly important to be true to yourself. I always thought that was ‑ I always thought that was one of Julia Gillard’s problems. I mean, you know, gay marriage is a classic example. I mean, there you had two leaders, Gillard and Abbott, both of them against gay marriage. Abbott, you know, former seminarian; you know, married for 30 years; goes to mass everyday; devout Catholic –
ELLEN FANNING:
Does he go to mass everyday?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Most days I think, but he’s ‑ but he’s very religious, and so ‑ is Tony ‑ would you think ‑ you might think he’s wrong, but he’s clearly sincerely wrong. Julia Gillard –
ELLEN FANNING:
Is that how you view it, he’s sincerely wrong?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, on gay marriage, yes, I think he is sincerely wrong. On gay marriage, Gillard who had taken a political position, you know never married, atheist, saying marriage can only be between a man and woman, it just ‑ she ‑ look, maybe she sincerely believed it, but hardly anyone would believe her, and that was all ‑ that was ‑ I thought that was so sad that she got herself into a position for political reasons which ‑ which even though people ‑ even people who agreed with the position would have said, “You’re not fair dinkum.”
ELLEN FANNING:
I want to play you one more excerpt from that interview and it’s about achievement, I think.
REPORTER:
Were you anxious that you mightn’t succeed? Was there ever a time where you thought, “Maybe I won’t” –
MALCOLM TURNBULL [Aged 34, Recording]:
Oh, yes, I’m very critical of myself. I think I’m a very harsh critic of myself. I … you know, my wife would say I’m too harsh. I’m constantly concerned that I haven’t, you know, pushed hard enough, done well enough. Yeah, very. I do get concerned about that.
ELLEN FANNING:
Are you still that hard on yourself?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Not as hard as I used to be.
ELLEN FANNING:
And did that attitude make it harder for you and that success, everything you touched it seemed you were successful. You were the headboy –
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, that’s not true.
ELLEN FANNING:
Well, you know, you don’t get a Rhodes Scholarship if you’re not trying hard, you’re not successful. You don’t ‑ ‑ ‑
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
I got it on my third attempt.
ELLEN FANNING:
Did you? You had to keep trying.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
And it’s not such a big deal, you know, a Rhodes Scholarship.
ELLEN FANNING:
Really.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
I’ll tell you a story. Well, my dad was out at North St Mary’s, he was a hotel broker –
ELLEN FANNING:
This is going to be news to Tony Abbott. Go on.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
No, he was out ‑ he was out ‑ he was out visiting the publican at North St Mary’s, probably talking about selling his pub or something –
ELLEN FANNING:
Yes.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
And I rang ‑ tracked him down and rang him up and said, “Dad, I’ve won the Rhodes Scholarship”, and he was just so excited as you can imagine. He rang me back five minutes later, he said, “Oh”, he said ‑ he said, “I’ve got to get out of here, I have got to come back to see you. It’s terrible.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, I have just explained ‑ I told the publican you have won a Rhodes Scholarship, and he said to me, ‘That’s great, Bruce. I’ve got a cousin in the Department of Main Roads. We must get them together’.”
(Ellen and audience laughing and clapping). I thought ‑ I’ve always ‑ I think these great achievements, you can take them a bit too seriously.
ELLEN FANNING:
Thanks Malcolm. We’ll be right back in just a moment.
SEGMENT THREE
ELLEN FANNING:
Now, there’s talk of a comeback, not by you, but it seems just about everybody else. Let’s have a look.
KEVIN RUDD [Recording]:
Well, I heard Malcolm the other night was having chats with friends and colleagues about a possible comeback. Maybe that’s just scuttlebutt in Sydney, but it would be kind of interesting. As for myself I’m a bit like (comedian) Hughesy, I’m just a natural athlete.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
He’s certainly not a natural comic. (Audience laughing). The ‑ ‑ ‑
ELLEN FANNING:
Everyone wants Malcolm, even Kevin it seems.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, that should tell you something. I think ‑ ‑ ‑
ELLEN FANNING:
What should it tell you?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
I don’t know. Kevin’s a mystery. The ‑ look, the great strength of the Coalition versus Labor is that we have a united team, a harmonious team; they on the other hand has been, as we all know, bitterly divided with extraordinarily venomous, actually quite frightening, personal animosities. They are ‑ you know, they’re rabble. I mean that’s being generous to describe Labor as a rabble.
ELLEN FANNING:
And what the story is how –
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
We are ‑ we are united.
ELLEN FANNING:
How is the situation now, that despite that ‑ that description of the last three years of Labor that in the polls the two parties are 50/50 and Tony Abbott trails ‑ trails Kevin Rudd substantially in the preferred Prime Minister stakes. I mean, how have we ended up in that position?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, I mean, I guess there’s been a relief rally for Labor because of Julia Gillard’s replacement by Kevin Rudd. I read all the polls. I’m not going ‑ ‑ ‑
ELLEN FANNING:
Did you read the one that showed that if you led the Coalition there’d been a landslide for the Coalition, and that you lead the preferred Prime Minister 65 per cent to Kevin Rudd’s 35 per cent.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, it’s very flattering, but it’s a little bit like fantasy football.
ELLEN FANNING:
Why?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, because it’s not going to happen.
ELLEN FANNING:
Why?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Because we have a leader, we have a team, and, you know, the message I ‑ I know that ‑ I read those polls and they’re not ‑ I’m not suggesting they’re ‑ I’m not even suggesting they’re wrong, I don’t know how right they are, but ‑ there’s obviously some truth in them.
The message that I have is that if you would prefer me to be the leader of the Liberal Party, that is very flattering, I’m not, but I’m part of the Liberal team. So if you’re a Malcolm Turnbull supporter, if you think I have a positive contribution to make in Government, then that is a very good reason to vote for the Coalition, and you may have a similar view about other members of our front bench.
So it is, you know, the fact that we are united ‑ I mean as Tony Abbott said yesterday, we have room in our party for more than one big figure. Labor clearly did not. So that’s ‑ that tells you a lot about the character and cohesion of the Coalition; and politics –
ELLEN FANNING:
At the ‑ ‑ ‑
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Ellen, is a team business, you know ‑ ‑ ‑
ELLEN FANNING:
But politics is about getting into Government, and the spectre ‑ ‑ ‑
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
This is true.
ELLEN FANNING:
The spectre of 1993 where John Hewson lost the unlosable election must figure largely in Liberal minds. Does there come a point where as popular as you are, you have a responsible to take the leadership if that would guarantee for the Coalition a victory?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, look, the ‑ there are no guarantees in politics. We are weeks away from an election. You know, I think Kevin Rudd is likely to call an election within the next week. So we are somewhere between, you know, say, six and nine weeks from an election. I mean, the course is set, the crew is in place. We are ready to go. So this is ‑ this is no time to be playing fantasy football.
ELLEN FANNING:
And so if ‑ if it’s not the leadership you look forward to, what have you got to look forward to other than an election in the next six to nine weeks?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well, the very interesting challenges of sorting out the National Broadband Network; being the Minister responsible for SBS and among other things. (Audience laughing and clapping).
ELLEN FANNING:
I was thinking ‑ you’re going to be in trouble at home. That was a cue to talk about becoming a grandfather.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Yeah, Daisy is going to have a baby in about nine weeks and that is amazingly exciting and I have to say it’s more ‑ well, the election is very exciting, but the first grandchild ‑ the first grandchild has an excitement level all of its own.
ELLEN FANNING:
Thank you so much for being my guest. Please thank Malcolm Turnbull.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Thank you.
ENDS