As Donald Trump looks set to be the next US Republican candidate, the Q+A Panel discuss what a second Trump presidency would mean for the US and Australaia. Panellists: Panellists: Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull joins writer and social analyst Rebecca Huntley, along with British historian and academic Peter Frankopan, Ukraine Democracy Initiative co-founder Olga Oleinikova and Sydney University social policy professor Jioji Ravulo. This episode was broadcast on Monday February 26, 2024
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 Donald Trump looks set to be the next US Republican candidate.
00:05 Given his apparent low regard for democracy as...
00:09 ..and his, you know, potentially interest in Putin,
00:16 what would you...
00:17 ..what would a second Trump presidency mean
00:20 for government and policy in the US,
00:23 and how does that affect Australia?
00:25 Yeah.
00:26 The Australia part of that question
00:28 is a really interesting one.
00:30 Malcolm Turnbull, I'm going to start with you,
00:32 and, Olga, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Putin part.
00:35 Look, I think it raises some very big challenges.
00:39 We have, in part because of the AUKUS decision that Morrison took
00:45 and that the Albanese governments adopted,
00:49 we have made ourselves much more dependent on the United States
00:53 at a time when the United States,
00:56 particularly if Trump becomes president,
00:58 will be much less reliable.
01:01 It's going to raise some very real issues.
01:04 The challenge is going to be for the Australian government
01:07 to stand up for Australia
01:10 and to not back down
01:13 or get into a sort of sycophantic posture vis-Ã -vis Trump.
01:18 Trump is a bully.
01:19 He encourages people to suck up to him.
01:22 You know, notoriously, I didn't do that.
01:25 I mean, that was partly my personality and partly circumstance,
01:29 but I think it was a good thing.
01:31 But, you know, we have to get used to the fact
01:35 that the United States may not be the...
01:40 ..have be aligned on the same values in quite the same way
01:45 as it was 20, 30, 40 years ago.
01:49 And that's a reality we've got to live with.
01:51 Scott Morrison did an exit interview with The Nine Papers,
01:54 and he said Donald Trump poses no threat
01:56 to Australia's national security.
01:59 Oh, sure.
02:00 So, he thinks, "What if Donald Trump...
02:03 "What if Donald Trump forces Ukraine to surrender to Putin?
02:08 "What if Donald Trump pulls out of NATO?"
02:12 And you think there is a live option, live possibility?
02:15 Well, I mean, I think it's...
02:17 Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of NATO.
02:19 Donald Trump stood up in front of an audience
02:21 and said that he said to an unnamed European leader,
02:25 "If you don't spend more money on defence,
02:28 "I'm going to encourage, you know, Putin to have a go at you."
02:31 That's more or less what he said.
02:33 I mean, this...this...
02:35 Look, Trump rattled every single cage, every single alliance.
02:41 He was... He is attracted to dictators and tyrants like Kim Jong-un,
02:47 like Xi Jinping, like Putin,
02:50 and he threatened to undermine or pull out
02:53 of his most...of America's longest-standing alliances.
02:57 Now, if Scott Morrison thinks
02:59 none of that is a threat to Australian security,
03:02 well, I'm afraid to say, I...
03:04 Not for the first time, I disagree with my esteemed...
03:07 (LAUGHTER)
03:08 Not for the first time.
03:09 Olga, I want to bring you in. Yeah, yeah.
03:11 Malcolm Turnbull painted a picture a little earlier
03:15 of Donald Trump being in awe of Putin.
03:18 Do you see a potential Donald Trump presidency
03:21 as being a risk to the people of Ukraine?
03:24 Look, until today, US is one of the big donors, right,
03:27 and funders of support, of Western support, right?
03:31 So, US is, like, a leading Western ally
03:33 in the whole, like, kind of Western bloc, right?
03:36 Biden was one of the first who actually came down to Ukraine,
03:39 and he posted photos, I think, on Instagram yesterday or something,
03:42 that he was the first one on the ground in Ukraine
03:45 when the war started.
03:47 To say that we will be there for you,
03:50 we'll support Ukrainian people no matter what.
03:53 So, what this change will...
03:55 And already we see the signs of what is happening, right?
03:58 So, we don't get the promised support to Ukraine, right?
04:01 Everything is withhold, and...
04:04 Yeah, hopefully we'll get it,
04:05 but, again, there is this tendency, right, for Ukraine to...
04:10 ..to become...
04:11 Like, now we're bundled with Israel, right, as an expense item,
04:15 let's put it this way, right, in US support to foreign countries.
04:19 So, I mean, Ukraine is no longer, it looks like,
04:22 becoming a one big, you know, issue to support
04:27 and to assist the democratic world, right,
04:30 with the fight for democracy.
04:32 I mean, yes, right?
04:34 If Donald Trump already made...
04:36 So, do you see a threat to Ukraine's ability...
04:39 Yeah. ..to resist this war if Donald Trump's elected?
04:41 Yes. I mean, we'll see, right?
04:42 But from what he's saying and from his behaviour in the last,
04:46 like, years, right, we can see that, you know,
04:49 he will not, you know, support things on this scale.
04:54 And I'm not sure if he will be, like, the best friend, right,
04:57 because US was one of the best, best friends
04:59 of Ukrainian struggle in this war.
05:02 He said that he knows how to end war in Ukraine in 30 days
05:06 or something like that, right?
05:07 So, I mean, again... It was 30 minutes.
05:09 Oh, 30 minutes, sorry, 30 days.
05:10 And how would he do that?
05:11 I mean, Peter... Look, look...
05:14 Have you studied his strategy?
05:16 Look, like Orson Welles said, you know,
05:18 even a stop clock is right twice a day.
05:21 And, you know, I never, ever thought I would defend Donald Trump.
05:27 And I'm not defending Donald Trump,
05:28 but he's not wrong about NATO underinvesting in their armed forces.
05:31 He's not wrong about Europe allowing...
05:33 ..getting American taxpayers to pay
05:35 for the security envelope across Europe.
05:37 He might have said it in a chaotic way.
05:38 He might mean he's going to pull out.
05:40 He might be... The cataclysm comes towards us.
05:42 But we in Europe have got lazy
05:44 by underinvesting in a long-term future.
05:46 And that's a charge that could be laid
05:48 at other governments around the world
05:49 who now have to scale up things like navies,
05:51 which take a long time to build, very expensive.
05:54 The capacity to be able to do that is tough.
05:57 But, you know, to prove that the stop clock thing is right,
06:01 Putin was asked last week
06:02 whether he'd prefer Biden or Trump in the White House.
06:05 And Putin said, "I prefer Biden because Trump is highly volatile."
06:08 And, again, most people would think that Putin and Trump
06:10 will get on like a house on fire.
06:12 But if you're in Moscow's shoes,
06:14 a predictable, reliable way that the machine works
06:18 has its obvious advantages.
06:19 So, you know, I think that Trump is going to be difficult and dangerous.
06:23 He's extremely dogmatic.
06:25 He doesn't listen to advisers.
06:27 As Malcolm said, he doesn't respect the rule of law.
06:29 Look at the fines that are piled up towards him and the appeals.
06:33 I think that's a real problem for the leader of the free world.
06:35 And as someone who grew up thinking what the West does
06:37 and what the United States leads in terms of freedoms,
06:40 its soft power, you look at what the US produces,
06:42 from Netflix through to Taylor Swift,
06:45 God bless her, here in Sydney this evening.
06:47 You know, the stock market in the US is the highest it's ever been,
06:50 more or less, this evening.
06:51 Everything about the US should speak confidence.
06:53 And yet there's a crisis in the US that, for some reason,
06:56 Trump has led his believers to think that America is a power
06:58 that is failing, fading and needs to be regalvanised.
07:02 And so, you know, I think that it's going to be tricky
07:05 when he comes back in.
07:06 I think it's going to be tricky for those of us outside...
07:09 When? When he comes back in?
07:10 I think it looks like it. You never know.
07:11 It looks like it, but we should be prepared.
07:13 You think he's on his way back? Yeah.
07:15 I...I...well, I think he's...
07:17 I think he's a...
07:18 Yes, look, he's certainly even money at this stage.
07:21 I'll just say this about Trump - he's not a warmonger, OK?
07:25 He's essentially, at heart, an isolationist.
07:28 And Peter's absolutely right
07:31 that the Europeans have not spent enough on their own defence
07:34 to be, you know, if you like,
07:36 complacent under the American security umbrella.
07:39 But the fact remains is that the way Trump operates
07:44 is he encourages our adversaries.
07:48 And he is not...
07:50 You know, who is the leader that he most admires in Europe?
07:53 It's Viktor Orban, you know,
07:56 who is not exactly a model for liberal democracy.
07:58 In fact, he prides himself on running an illiberal democracy
08:01 in Hungary.
08:02 And for Ukraine as well. Yeah, exactly.
08:04 So, the...so, the...
08:07 Again, you've got to be careful not to engage...
08:09 ..get in Trump derangement syndrome,
08:11 where everything Trump says is...
08:14 ..because he says it is therefore wrong.
08:16 But nonetheless, the idea that it would be a safer world
08:21 for any of us, let alone Australia,
08:23 with Donald Trump at the helm in the White House,
08:26 is very, very naive.
08:28 Georgie?
08:29 What I worry about is the conservative politicking
08:32 that is coming from the United States
08:34 and potentially what might happen here in Australia,
08:36 the way in which I think conservative politics here
08:40 are leaning towards the Trump sort of approach.
08:42 And for me, that threatens a lot of human rights
08:46 and civil liberties,
08:47 especially for, you know, diverse community groups.
08:51 Shout-out to our queer communities.
08:53 Shout-out to our queer communities.
08:55 Happy Mardi Gras this weekend.
08:56 Yay! (APPLAUSE)
08:59 And the queer community, can I say,
09:01 is having a pretty tough time at the moment.
09:03 That's exactly right.
09:04 And I think that's why we need to be conscious
09:06 of what happens in America
09:08 will not just, from an economic point of view,
09:10 have a flow-on effect,
09:11 but the morality and the ethics that we see from America
09:15 does have a flow-on effect
09:16 to what might happen in Australia as well.