Australia, Brexit, and Populism | Andrew Neil | Tom Switzer

you [Music] good evening and welcome to the Center for independent studies my name is Tom Switzer I am the executive director here at CIS can I say from the outset that I like to acknowledge here in the presence C this evening the former Prime Minister John Howard for those of you who aren't familiar with CIS we are a public policy research organization we've been around since 1976 created by my predecessor Greg Lindsay who's also here this evening a CIS is primarily committed to promoting the principles of classical liberalism so we believe profoundly in the idea of the individual freedom of choice a productivity-enhancing reform limited democratic government religious freedom and not least open and civilized debate we hope to speak beyond that toxic polarization that all too often characterizes public discourses not just in Canberra but throughout the Western world we also like to step back from the cut and thrust of politics in Canberra and put events political events and public policy debates in a broader international context and that brings me to this evening's event we at CIS are absolutely thrilled and honored to be hosting here this evening someone I regard as one of the world's greatest broadcast and print journalists Andrew Neil is the presenter of several leading BBC television shows including this week and politics live he's also the chairman of press holdings Media Group which publishes among other fine publications The Spectator magazine and you can see copies of The Spectator magazine on your chair as well as of course its sister publication The Spectator Australia which I had the great pleasure of editing for several years Andrew Neil is also former editor of The Sunday Times this is a news publication from 1983 to 1994 he's a founding chairman of I news according to the independent newspaper Andrew Neil is quote a brilliant interviewer on top of his brief and never afraid to embarrass with a difficult question and as I said before he is such a master political interrogator it's hardly surprising that senior coalition ministers in both Britain and this country run a million miles away from him but we're not frightened to have him here ladies and gentlemen please welcome Andrew Neil thank you Tom thank you all for that introduction my father would have liked it my mother would have believed it so I'm very very grateful to you good evening ladies and gentlemen I'm slightly apprehensive as I appear before you tonight because the last time I was here I spoke in Sydney I think it was at the Sydney Institute and I thought I'd managed at least to get away with it which is the best you could hope in these circumstances but as I was leaving a woman came up to me and said mr. Neil your speech was absolutely superfluous I said well thank you very much and she said tell me is it going to be published and I being a smartass journalist said yes but probably posthumously and she looked down he said I can hardly wait so I hope to be he a little bit better tonight it's great to be back in Sydney particularly in this year of anniversaries the 250 years since Captain Cook set sail from the UK in a humble Collier which had been used to bring coal from Whitby in the northeast of England to London and ending up here in the east coast of what became Australia it's 230 years since captain Phillips arrived in what we now call Sydney Harbour and of course most important of all as I'm sure you can all agree it's ten years since we launched Spectator Australia and the nurture to strength by the wise hand of Tom Switzer and in rude health under Oh indeed indeed I'm here to do a number events to celebrate because we've achieved what was thought to be as impossible as operating a wind farm without government subsidies yes in the digital age we have created a print magazine that makes a profit and one of the other reasons I'm here is that we plan to expand in 2019 and build on our success now of course these are prodigious times for a political magazine as I prepared for my trip here and did my homework as my mother always told me that I should I sometimes wondered if I was heading for Italy rather than Australia and now that I'm here I have to pinch myself that I am on the banks of Sydney Harbour and not on the banks of the Tiber though both seemed to be forming with much political blood these days perhaps this sense though his eyes an outsider would say to you tonight this sense of Australian politics as a Shakespearean drama with periodic backstabbing perhaps it's overdone I think it is true to say that six Prime Minister's in ten years may be regarded as somewhat excessive and for the year two main parties to have had nine leaders in ten years may be regarded as excessive - I mean you have succeeded in turning the Italians into also-rans in the rotating Prime Minister stakes but it isn't unprecedented between the foundation of the Commonwealth in 1901 and the outbreak of the first world war in 1914 you had ten prime ministers Robert Menzies probably for someone from Britain other than of course John Howard the most famous Australian Prime Minister was forced to resign in 1951 samsaric 1941 when you stood with us against the Nazis and the Nazis allies and it seems that war makes no difference as to when you want to get rid of a prime minister between 1966 and 1972 at the height of America of Australian involvement in the Vietnam War you managed to go through six prime ministers so clearly being a fright minister in Australia is not for those who value job security but I wonder if you stand back and put Australia into a more international context whether Australian politics is that unique or whether indeed you are any more dysfunctional than many other major democracies today indeed in some ways perhaps you are less a dysfunctional I would argue that you are no more dysfunctional than the politics of Westminster of Washington that's an easy case to make Paris or Berlin or Rome indeed in many cases I would argue that you are less dysfunctional for example your two major parties on the center left and the center-right are still you two major parties one of them will form a government after the next election just as one of them forms the current government there is not so in France it's not so in Italy some parties in other democracies have either gone by the board or have survived by changing out of all recognition in France the center-left Socialist Party and the center-right godless party barely exist anymore barely exist that would be like the Labour Party in the Liberal Party in this country no longer existing on election night in Paris in May of last year when I was there covering the election it was a beautiful spring night and I walked from my hotel to the songs of Lisa where we were doing our broadcast I walk past the Socialist headquarters it was closed no lights on no security outside I walked past the Gollust headquarters it was closed no security outside no lights on they didn't even participate in the second round of the French presidential election and since that presidential election the Socialist Party in France is down to six percent and the Republican Party which is the center-right party is it 14 percent of the polls and about to change his leader again in Italy the same thing has happened the Christian Democrats who ran Italy for most of the 60 years after the second world war no longer exist the Socialist Party in Italy has gone the way of the French Socialist Party and of the Greek Socialist Party which no longer exists either so to that extent Australian politics still has a sense of recognition about it in a way that these other democracies don't and it's true that in other countries major parties have survived but some of them have survived as I said by changing out of all recognition from what they were the Republicans which have only survived in America because they've gone through a hostile takeover by Donald Trump or the British Labour Party which has survived and not gone the way of other social democratic parties in Europe but only because it's been taken over by its first-ever neo-marxist leader and is out of all recognition to what the Labour Party was under mr. brown or mr. Blair your parties however still straddle the mainstream which cannot be said of many well-established anymore more important I would argue and a sign that you may not be as dysfunctional as you think is I can detect no sign you may can tell me put me right of any rise of what I would call the nativist hard right in Australia I don't see that coming through I know that you've had the one nation party and Pauline Hanson though that seems rather yesterday rather than today I don't see the rise of a nativist hard right taking place in Australia and yet the nativist hard-right is rampant across Europe and even in government in many other European democracies and again I think that is a sign of the dysfunction of other democracies a dysfunction that you here in Australia don't have and I'd like to see dwell a bit on what's been happening there because in some ways it is the most important political democratic development of our time after brexit in the summer of 2016 and the election of mr. Trump in 2016 Europe feared that that populist wave that had produced brexit and produce mr. Trump both of them predicted not to happen by all mainstream pundits and by all the opinion polls as well that Europe was in for some trouble and yet it looked for a while as if Europe was going to get a get out of jail card in March of 2017 and get builders in Holland did not do as well as he hoped to mr. Rooter they midstream Prime Minister remain Prime Minister the mainstream parties lost voters did quite well but not enough for a breakthrough and then came the biggest hope of all where mr. Mac wrong swept all before him in the French presidential election not only winning two-to-one in the second round of the French presidential elections but getting a landslide majority for a party that hadn't even existed a year ago in the French parliament and the European establishment breathed a sigh of relief and thought that the macron spring was a sign that Europe had dodged the bullet that the kind of populist tendencies that had given us brexit and given us mr. Trump weren't going to happen that it was going to be business as usual but actually that turned out to be wrong it turned out that populism particularly of the right-wing variety hadn't Pete because since the macron spring in May of 2017 we've had a number of that suggests that hard-right nativist populism is on the move in Europe the AFD which is a pretty hard right German party began by taking seats in the state Parliament's of Germany in the summer and early autumn and then it took he record 94 seats in the German Federal Elections in the Bundestag 94 that is the equivalent of having 60 hard-right MPs in the British House of Commons there isn't one it's a Cunha of sixty ninety four seats in the Bundestag went to the hard right so many that it made it very difficult for mrs. Merkel to form a coalition government it took her three months almost four and which he had to reignite her contract with the Social Democrats in another grand coalition and as a consequence made the AFD the main party of opposition the main party of Opposition in Germany today is on the hard right that's not dysfunctional I don't know what is then the hard right was returned to government in Norway Norway a social democratic country since the end of the Second World War the end of the czech parliament they took power this year in italy a coalition of hard right populist and hard left populace has formed the government in Rome today a coalition of hard left and hard right what could possibly go wrong that is pretty dysfunctional they pulled well in Slovenia where we're weighing on election they're back up in the polls in Holland where they got 15% in the election they're now on 22 speaking of the hard right mr. Putin was reelected in Moscow there's a surprise Spain has not had a problem with the hard right all the hard left but it's going through its worst political crisis in 40 years mrs. Merkel has been greatly weakened and indeed as among the walking wounded now and is living on borrowed time Mr Mac wrong the great hope of the moderate macron spring his personal ratings are now below Donald Trump's which is quite an achievement Social Democratic parties are in crisis across Europe and this Sunday there is an election in Sweden and I know that that is not necessary of huge international importance except in a way it is because it is possible that the party that comes first in the election on Sunday will be the Sweden Democrats not the Social Democrats the Sweden Democrats a hard right anti-immigration nativist party now when that happens in a prosperous country like Sweden which has always been a byword for moderate center-left progress you know something dysfunctional is happening in other democracies there is a lot more dysfunctional I would argue than anything that has happened to you here in Australia all poles in Europe now show immigration and terrorism of the top two issues the economy and the GDP and he Kaname well-being which traditionally dominated all elections you got reelected if living standards were rising you got kicked out of living standards were falling they don't determine elections anymore identity security the level of migration a sense of being of things being out of control they now determined elections if the Sweden Democrats which by the way polled 1.4 percent in 2002 they're currently pulling 20% if they get 20% or over in the Sunday election it will be happening at a time when Sweden has full employment rising standards of living the world's thirst third best health service and basically a cradle to grave welfare state and I sense and real wages unlike here or in Britain real wages have been rising quite rapidly and yet because of issues of migration and identity and fear of terrorism - it is possible that the Sweden Democrats will come out if not the largest party that I'm pretty sure they will certainly be the second largest party now they won't form a government but that in itself could be a problem because if they don't they'll say we won but you won't let us into power just wait till the next election and so it's not determined we've always thought that these kind of parties from the far left or the far right got into power because of economic hard times got into power because people felt they weren't getting a fair shake rather important reasons one is that you've not her had a recession for 27 years you now hold the world record for continuous growth of any major economy even the Lehman crash in 2008 you managed to shrug off it was a setback but our GDP declined by six percent America's GDP declined by six percent in 2009 the eurozone went into a downward spiral your growth slowed down a bit but never did you move in to a recession and this crash of 2008 which of course affected you but nothing like Europe or America has had a long tail and it's been a slow burn because a combination of prolonged austerity and stagnant wages much longer than anybody thought has resulted in some of this political backlash that I've been talking about to begin with people thought yep we need to tighten our belts yep this is clearly a major change it's not gonna be easy for a couple of years they did not think that eight years on their wages in real terms still wouldn't have risen they didn't think that 60% of Greek youngsters would still be unemployed 40% of Italian youngsters 35 percent of French youngsters 30 percent of Spanish youngsters would still be unemployed it's had a long slow tail very different from the crash of 1929 which had an almost immediate political impact the crash of 29 then had an economic impact by 1930 by 1932 FDR had swept to power in a landslide by 1933 mr. Hitler had come to power in Germany and mr. Mussolini had consolidated his power in Italy to begin with nothing seemed to change in Europe mr. Obama was re-elected in 2012 David Cameron won an election and formed a coalition with the Liberals in 2010 mrs. Merkel was re-elected in Germany mr. Berlusconi continued in Italy mr. Hollande carried on in France but then because the austerity continued because there was a sense that things were not getting better despite the belt tightening the political backlash came and that backlash was exacerbated by two trends within it none of which you have quite been subject to one was the quantitative easing the electronic printing of money which the Reserve Bank of Australia has not done my own view was essential because the fiscal response to the recession had to be was difficult because budget deficits were already very extended and national debt was already very high in most of these economies so the central bank starting with the Federal Reserve in America then with the Bank of Japan then the Bank of England finally with the ECB began the electronic printing of money to buy government bonds and put cash onto the balance sheets of the banks and other financial institutions to spend my view is that it was essential to do that but it had a consequence an unforeseen consequence perhaps an unavoidable consequence but a consequence of huge political import and it was this if you already owned assets houses equities bonds they zoomed up in value as QE poured into these assets way beyond the countries in which the QE was being generated and so if you were asset rich you were doing fine but if you weren't asset rich and dependent on a wage your wage was stagnant so people had assets were fine people who depended on a wage weekend we cut felt hard done by and that added to a sense of injustice and then the second trend in this was it the people who felt the injustice most for those who'd felt that they had not been the cause of the crash in 2008 they were just the ordinary workers they are not the ones that had run the bank's they're not the ones that invented derivatives there are not the ones that sliced and diced dodgy assets and gave it a triple-a rating they had just get on with their jobs and they were still suffering eight years on and yet the people who had caused the crash who had been behind of it not one was prosecuted not one was brought to justice unlike the Savings and Loan scandal in America in the 1980s when there were 1,100 convictions not one wall street a London banker was prosecuted for what happened indeed because of QE and as they picked themselves up these people were richer than ever doing better than ever the people who had cause of the crash and yet the people who hadn't caused the crash were still struggling to make ends meet and I think when you see and take into account that slow-burn that long tail of the Lehman Brothers crash in 2008 you have many of the reasons why mr. salvini is Deputy Prime Minister in Italy why Britain voted for brexit why mr. Trump is now in the White House and why even though she lost marine lepen got 33% of the vote in the second round of the French presidential election twice as much as her father got in 2002 and why there are no pretty hard right governments in power in Poland Hungary and the Czech Republic and I think the second reason why you have not been hit by this is because and I know there's still a debate of our immigration about numbers and so on but that debate it seems to me takes place within the context that you are seem to be in control of your own borders who comes in here is overwhelmingly a matter for you and for you too at the numbers and to set the criteria by which people can come to this country and I know there was a huge argument about the the so-called boat people and about the camps and all the rest of it but it takes place within a context that that somehow even if a controversial with some people you are in control of the migration process it may leak at the edges there is an argument are they too many other too few what is the kind but it's your decision they come in your terms that's not been so in the United Kingdom because of free movement of people's from the rest of Europe it's not been so in Greece as people from the Middle East have poured in or Italy or Germany or in America or even now in Sweden which per capita took in 165 thousand migrants from very different culture than Sweden's traditional culture the highest per capita number of immigrants of any European country even higher because of the population difference than mrs merkel's germany who took in almost a million so the sense grew rightly or wrongly that the politicians couldn't control their borders the sense grew that at a time when it was pretty difficult anyway almost anybody who seemed to come into the country and the politicians weren't able to stop it now in some cases factually that wasn't true but that was the public perception and it added to a sense that the mainstream traditional politicians were not in control and I think if you wrap up all these things together things that have not really affected Australia you see why the rise in particular of the hard right but also why so many major European democracies are note quite dysfunctional in France I mentioned that Madame lepen got a third of the vote which is quite remarkable you think there a third of a democracy voted for essentially a neo fascist party I mean you used to think about that for a minute in 2017 and since then the center right and center-left parties have failed to come back the two main opposition parties in France now are a party called the insurgents and soomi's led by mr. melon Xiong on the hard left and Madam the pen whose rebranded the National Front the National Rally so that makes us feel much better on the right and indeed for broadcasters in France it's become a major problem now because they need to put people up against Mackrell but the old Socialist Party in the old Republican Party are kind of irrelevant so the main opposition on television is from an suis and mr. Melling Xiong and from Madame lepen and of course that becomes self reinforcing because if these are the opposition voices on television in people's minds these are the opposition to mr. macro so that's pretty dysfunctional in Germany as I rarely said the AFD has now got 93 seats in the Bundestag ninety four if you include one person who has stepped down but is still nominally a member they control three of the four major committees in the Bundestag and they are probably about to do very well in the Bavarian elections which could blow up the coalition because in Germany the CSU which is mrs merkel's right-wing party from Bavaria they have always controlled Bavaria they take a harder line in immigration if they still they won't lose but if the AFD does very well they will insist that mrs. Merkel gets a lot tougher or they will walk out the visitor a group of countries are now a threat to Brussels that's Poland Czech Republic and Hungary they're basically at war with the Brussels Commission again in the hard right Italy as I've explained has got a populist left and right government together they are about to announce a budget which will break every EU rule but the race they are going to introduce a national income basic income for everybody and they are going to introduce say base a flat rate of tax the short-run consequences of that will be probably to increase the Italian deficit to 6% of GDP which breaks every rule in the book they have said that if Brussels tries to stop them doing it they will introduce a parallel currency they won't leave the Europe they will introduce a parallel currency called the mini bot the bot Bo T is a two-year Italian bond we will introduce many boats with denominations of 1 5 and 10 euros and they'll put it out as a parallel currency out of control of the European Central Bank that sounds pretty dysfunctional to me I'm thinking of dysfunction let me come to BRICS it I think remain as and levers would all have to admit that this has proved to be much tougher than anybody thought and I think that misses me never quite recovered from her disastrous election campaign of the summer of 2017 in which he lost what majority she had and did not get a mandate for any particular type of brexit which means that again and again Brussels has played hardball and again and again Brussels has pretty much won the strategic game of the European Union has been twofold in the brexit negotiations one was to make it so difficult so tough and so unpleasant that nobody else tries to leave the European Union and although you're a skepticism is very strong even mr. salvini in Italy or mr. Orban in Hungary are not saying we should leave the European Union so to that extent that list of a succeeded the other aim of the European Union has to be to try to make sure that no alternative economic model takes off 20 miles north of Calais in the fifth largest economy of the world because that terrifies them that an alternative and potentially successful economic model could be so close to mainland Europe which is why again they've played such hardball and that it's interesting that they're worried about two talented models the most common one you may have had is that we become sort of Singapore West that will become a low taxation law regulation economy and do well they hate the thought of that but the repo equally worried that a Corbin government could turn Britain into a sort of Cuba East and the reason that worries them easy that it would involve protection capital controls and massive state ownership and state subsidies of Industry and that isn't just the policy of the European left that's the policy of the European hard right that's a policy of madam of the pen that's a policy of the AFD that's the policy of mr. salvini in Italy so they don't want that to happen either and so far they've been pretty successful the British government's strategic aim well I'm paid to try and find it out but I have to tell you tonight I cannot find what it is except now just to try and get out mrs. May with the check as agreement has agreed or as proposed an arrangement whereby in terms of goods we effectively stay inside the European Union that we would fall all forms of regulation all ways of doing things would conform to EU rules services we try and go a different way would also be true for agriculture as well what the end of this is I don't know but what what they're trying to do they're trying to frighten the rest of the conservative party into saying if you don't go along with this then you may not get brexit at all and we're now in a situation where it's not clear that there's a majority in the House of Commons for any alternative it is pretty clear now that if mrs. May was to bring in the check as agreement as the done deal or or certainly to water it down more as a result of the negotiations there would not be a majority for that in the House of Commons now legally what then happens is that we revert to no deal at all that's the legal position but in my view with the House of Commons five six of which don't want no deal they will not let that happen so we don't know what then goes next a period of huge uncertainty with the endgame not certain the second referendum unlikely but don't rule it out I think what might save the British ironically in this is Europe because as Europe looks at what else is on its agenda a troublesome visi GAD group to the east a populist coalition in Rome now getting 62% in the polls by the way a need to do something about eurozone reform but mr. macro and mrs. Merkel can't agree because of the eurozone is no shape to weather another recession indeed the political fallout could be horrendous if the eurozone went into recession now threats of a trade war from mr. Trump in the White House they need a messy brexit like a hole in the head and I think mrs. Merkel as it moves out of the Commission in Brussels back to the heads of state to the Council of Europe I think you might find that mrs. Merkel and mr. mr. mr. macro and mrs. Merkel between them might in some way save the British bacon and cannot come up with an acceptable brexit acceptable to Brussels to Paris Berlin and to the United Kingdom but we don't know and we don't know how the Commons is going to vote let me finish up by coming back to Australia I hope I've said enough to make you realize that though you are a bit dysfunctional you know it is dysfunctional there's a lot of other democratic systems it seems to me as an outsider looking in the the combination of a strong Senate here I think you probably have the most powerful upper house of any democracy in the world plus a lower house of three-year terms I don't know whose bright idea that was but anyway you go through your turn that makes for instability political instability now again I may be wrong but I don't sense that there's any great appetite for constitutional change in either of these matters so I think you have to live with it there are consequences I think for what's been happening here I think it seems to me it is now harder in this country to take long term decisions and stick with them that is why the response to the drought I suspect has been disappointing and lacking in a long term decision I don't as I understand it there are no great plans to build any more snowy dams maybe it's a tinkerer but I think the the ability to take longer-term decisions and stick with it is more difficult you prime minister every year or every second year and then an energy policy I always thought that Britain of course along side of the Germany had probably the worst energy policy in the world that was before I came here I mean it takes genius of a very special nature to be probably the energy richest in resources country in the world and have the highest electricity prices in the world I mean you have to congratulate Sunday did you achieve that and again I think the difficulty of a system which you try to go for short-term gain you try to go for short-term advantage to stand back and take the more difficult decisions that energy policy would require I think has proved to be difficult and if there's only one danger I would see in which you may be infected at the margins by the kind of things I've been talking about in other democracies which I think are much more dysfunctional than yours as this I think it is quite dangerous when you have a combination of stagnant wages which is what you've had in this country for some time despite an incredibly successful economy wages have not been rising any faster than inflation sometimes though and rising energy prices which hit the poorest most of all and ordinary people most of all so if real wages are not rising but energy bills are soaring through the roof as I understand it electricity in this city is twice the cost of New York the Queensland energy prices I think are 1/3 higher than Texas that is a dangerous combination but some things people can't do without one of them is energy - heat in winter for air conditioning and a climate like this in the summer if they're rising and their wages are not that I think that the margins runs the risk of a change in opinion particularly among blue-collar workers who may feel the labour party doesn't represent them anymore and a liberal party that hasn't particularly represented them anymore in recent years either that is a danger I think you might face but it's at the margins and I think it's a sign of this country's great optimism that even in the difficulties of changing the prime minister yet again to prove that in this country even great political difficulties are can be seen as an opportunity or as a plus I was very taken by the fire department in Tasmania which said that although it is a bit annoying that we keep changing prime ministers it does mean that when we do change a prime minister it is a sign for everybody to change the batteries in the smoke alarms thank you very much thank you thank you Andrew Neil for that refreshing and sober speech let me clarify the first half of your remarks your argument is that because we've had 27 years of uninterrupted growth yeah and we've had a border protection system that boosts public support for our immigration system that means that the we've avoided the kind of populist insurgencies that are appending establishments across the rest of the West that's your argument isn't it that's right how would you respond to the argument and this is the media and intellectual conventional wisdom that because of all this leadership change because of our political leaders failure to decarbonize the economy because of our illegal and immoral refugee policies because of the polarizing and toxic nature of the right-wing base of the Liberal Party we are somehow a global laughingstock you'll often hear this in Fairfax the ABC the Saturday paper The Guardian Australia your response I've never heard anybody laughing never everybody is huge regard for Australia if they were laughing at me why are they all queuing up to try and come here you know people vote with their feet they're not trying to queue up to get into Azerbaijan yeah you have to get into mr. Putin's of Moscow either of course there's still plenty of room for debate I'm well aware this is a lively debate about immigration I understand that it is an issue that still divides you but it doesn't divide you and is not the toxic issue that it is in in European countries or that it became in the United States you know mr. Obama's immigration policy was basically to leave the border open and then round a couple of million Mexicans up and shoved them back over the border that's not a credible policy I know that there's been problems with the camps - it's not for me to take a position in this and I know there are arguments among the Australian voters as to what the level should be but I tell you it is not nothing like the toxic level of the debate of our immigrant what immigration in Europe which has produced the hard right or in some cases the hard left as well even to the extent that the one of the abiding arguments and debates in Britain now is about the extent of anti-semitism and the British Labour Party hmm I mean who would ever have thought that could come I mean I have Jewish friends who are for the first time of thinking they may have to leave the country I mean there's one woman I know she keeps her bag packed well we will open up to questions in a few moments and we can talk more about your thesis about Australia which is a refreshing argument because you're all too often you know the media will feed us a daily diet of doom and gloom about how bad things are but they very rarely put things in a broader international context so I'll get back to that Briggs it do you think it's been - more than 2 years now since the British people since I've ever andum yes right so to be more than to you since I voted to leave the leave the European Union do you think that they felt that there be so many strings attached to brings it no and I don't think remain as all levers I mean I covered the referendum did all the major interviews with all the the leaders of remain and leave and no one ever said there would be a divorce building no one said we'd be paying 40 billion to leave that came as a bit of a surprise to everybody no one thought it would be so difficult to negotiate an alternative to the single market nobody thought the British government would be so weak I mean I think the problem has been that doing breakfast whether right or wrong is not for me to say but doing it even with the strong government with a mandate that was united and knew what it wanted the end game to be even then it would be difficult for the reasons I gave that the Europeans have their own strategic goals we have none of the above therefore it has been much more difficult I don't think it therefore follows that the appetite is going back to remain indeed I think there's a danger in that they in in that in that if we're going to tell the British people that for the first time in living memory when they basically voted against the establishment that they have to vote again I think the backlash could be quite huge you know we talked about the there's an economic price to pay for leaving and there may be the short-term forecast turned out to be totally wrong or on that they said we would lose mr. Osborne said we'd lose half a million jobs we've added half a million jobs so he was slightly out on that's probably why he's no longer chances like mr. hockey they said we go into recession we've not gone into recession the longer term forecasts we don't know yet because we're not there so they haven't come through but we've nevertheless say that there could be an economic price well that's going to say there could be an even bigger Democratic price okay if you make the British people fight this on the economic front in fairness to the remainders they will argue that Airbus a Jaguar Land Rover Philips among other companies have all announced they will scale back investments in Brisbane if there's not a deal replicating the current trade relationship with Brussels surely that's a huge concern in Brisbane in Britain sorry the price 9 start I just I just saw only think that Captain Cook and captain Phillips should come back say we'll have that one today huge concerns in yeah of course but they are the consequence of uncertainty because they and I don't blame them I don't it's hard to blame people not taking a major investments issue when you don't know what the terms of trade will be all of these businesses Airbus Jagger they depend on on just-in-time supply chains and on international supply chains where parts will go back and forward across the border 6 7 10 times so until they see the nature of that their right to hold they thought that by now they would see the nature of it and it is quite remarkable the here we are what now in September we are jus legally to leave by the end of March we still don't know and that is not Europe's fault that is a bit the problem the British government faced and misses me new which is why she kept on kicking the ball into touch all the time or into the long grass was that she knew she could keep the party united as long as she didn't come out with an end game the moment she came out with an end game it began to fall apart and that that's been the difficulty and that's what's led to the rise of this oratory grassroots against my in recent weeks and months several distinguished sprits including the former conservative Prime Minister John Major the Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair they've joined forces to call for a second referendum on Briggs it is that really conceivable yes I think it is I still think it's like unlikely I feel like you know yeah you have to be careful what you say because almost everything wrong these days no were the unlikely kovin is exactly what happens you know like mr. Trump was unlikely or exit was unlikely but I do think it's still unlikely but if the House of Commons you see what I can't work out I was on the phone late last night because Parliament is back in London now we can't see a majority for anything in the current House of Commons and even if you change the leader and there's a growing head of steam now for mrs. May to go either before brexit is over or the moment practices after I mean her position is now more one of the changes has been before the Sun since the summer is that she's in a much more precarious position before she came out with the checkers agreement which is by the way only a so-called agreement within the government no no they've knocked store agree with Brussels exactly you know which is a long way way off what one of the the feeling was let's stick with mrs. may until we get some sort of agreement done okay now the thinking while this Agreement it's not acceptable so she's gonna have to go sooner there's a good Glaswegian expression of Christie's me at the moment which is her JK is hanging by a sugar leap egg and I will translate that for you which is that her jacket has been hung up on a peg on the wall which is not stuck to the wall very firmly and it could fall off at any moment the sugar leap egg and it could be she'll be gone by Christmas or certainly gone very soon after breaks it happens there was a time when they thought Downing Street that if they got through brexit it would be a great achievement that she would have a case for saying look I've delivered this I've done a great thing I've got is that I was even a remainer but I've done it I should fight the next election I just don't think that's good guys just to clarify if my the Prime Minister can't get an agreement with Brussels on the checkers agreement and she can't get it through the Parliament what happens in well it what would happen is it would still be possible is if she can't get an agreement the legal position is we default to no deal that's the legal that we leave at the end of March with no deal and we fall back on WTO rule that's right but my that's the legal position but there's lots of people in this room oh no and John horrible no very well legal in the polity is an entirely different thing I find it inconceivable that a House of Commons that is five six against No Deal would allow no deal to happen and that's where you could see a move to have another referendum what I can see is what's the question gonna be in that restaurant very good question I think John Howard knows about that so and I think this adds to the uncertainty in why you know I interviewed an Airbus I know it was clear Airbus had no desire to go there's no one else in the world makes the wings for Airbus the way we do Jaguar Land Rover wants to stay in Britain as well it's a huge success story I'd like British car industry was in the 1970s which was a basket case but if you can't see the future and if you're even being asked to invest a billion dollars in a new car plant or a new production line you need to know the terms of trade on which under which you'll be doing it and I think that it's holding things up okay the second referendum rod little cover story of the UK Spectator last week rod little of course is a one of your leaning colonists and he paraphrases the views of those who want a second referendum he says the people who voted leave are all thick and didn't know what they were voting for let's hear from a constituent from a Labour Party electorate it's the electorate of Whitefield this is in northern England she's addressing the BBC's question time which is the equivalent of the ABCs QA we knew what we voted for in leaving EU why I remain us making out constantly that we are uneducated people that didn't understand brexit and what we were doing and obviously that's that's what you feel I'm not an uneducated person I'm sure a lot of the people who voted to leave we knew I read everything I looked into everything it's how I felt and I did the old-fashioned pros and cons in writing and I wanted to leave and but people now are making out as if we're uneducated as if we don't know what we were doing and I just think the need to stop doing seven out of ten labor constituencies voted for Bridget you heard that lighting lady they're a libel ID from a lima constituent andrew knew well I said to you this morning the most significant part of that clip which is no run representative of question time when it goes to the north of England is that that woman had a north of England accent so this is very much a kind of the provinces against the Metropolitan which is a huge growing identity division in democracies including in this country as I understand it but across the world of metropolitan versus provincial big city versus smaller cities in country areas and that's why I would say again it's not for me to call the remain of you is that if we could only get a second referendum the whole brexit process has been such a mess that there'll be buyer's remorse and we will vote to stay in the second time that may be true you will never know to this tried my warning to them is maybe you shouldn't be so keen to get what you wish for because it could equally go the other way that people like that woman wasn't will say well you would never have made us vote again if they've been 52-48 to remain you are just simply trying to ignore us because you didn't get your way we we think you've made a mess of brexit but we still want to leave and you could end up with an even bigger majority for leaving so I think it's you're in an uncharted territory there and of course although the remainders would play all the you know there are the British people the poll show overwhelming they think the government's doing a bad job of the brexit process but the leave side would also have all these project fear forecasts that they made that didn't come to pass and so I wouldn't rule out you got a bigger majority now you've been following British politics closely for more than four decades you were the editor of The Sunday Times during the Tory civil war war over the Maastricht Treaty the European treaty 992 have you seen anything like these polarizing times in modern history yeah I uh I don't think it's actually that polarized I think there's a different problem I think lots of Europe is polarized continental Europe in the United States the United States has definitely polarized have we seen that with the way the Democrats are now moving left as the Republicans have moved right the Center Luc's are pretty forlorn place in America the moment the woman has just done to the Democratic primary candidate from the left has just unseated the Massachusetts acolytes of Bernie Sanders and to the left of Bernie in some rocky I think in Britain it's different there's no question mr. Corbyn is way to the left of any other previous Labour leader though the Labour parliamentary party is still pretty centrist the British conservatives are still pretty centrist they're not way out on the right so I don't think it's polarizing and you know even on the the brexit thing that the people we have in the media are polarized because they are the true believers you know we have to leave no we have to remain there are the ones that feel it most people didn't feel that strongly about it one way or another another and even a lot of remain as nothing can we not just get on with it we've had the vote I'm fed up I'll give you an example in Scotland which voted two to one to remain we all thought and Nicola Sturgeon the First Minister has gotten the thought I I thought she was right that given that Scotland is only leaving because English votes overwhelm the Scottish vote to remain that would move the dial for independence and yet it hasn't moved the dial at all there's no desire for a second referendum and independence there's no change in the polls for a second for if we did vote again on independence and it could be that outside the sort of Westminster bubble where people really feel strongly people vote in one way or they voted another but it wasn't a life-or-death decision for them and that they don't so I don't think for most other people it's polarizing I think it is for the metropolitan classes but I don't think it is for everybody else I think the bigger problem is an issue of competence and the level of competence in British politics of the moment is pretty low I mean one Labour MP said to me you know Andrew I've lived through times when we've had pretty useless government's I've lived through times when we've had pretty useless opposition's I've never lived through a time when we have both at once and I think it's partly to do with who is and the leadership at the moment the fact is there are not many people knows the 2010 intake into the British Isles of guns both on the Tory side and the labor side was a very high caliber but here's what's happened on the labor side that intake were all Social Democrats so mr. korman doesn't want them in a Shadow Cabinet they're not part of the Corbin count they're not the true believers they're the enemy on the Tory side they were very talented and mrs. may seems to have a complete resolution against promoting young talent so they're outside as well so we may be going through a hiatus at the moment that it will take it into the next decade to do there's no overall a shortage of talent but there's a shortage of talent on both front benches now you mentioned incompetence you also mentioned Jeremy Corbyn the socialist leader of the British Labour Party tell us briefly about this anti-semitism controversy that's engulfing the Labour Party well again it's another thing that you know none of us saw this coming that anti-semitism will become an issue in 2018 and it would become an issue from the left when I was a kid or university anti-semitism was the word I would call the knuckle-dragging right he was the fascist National Front of the British national party was skinheads and people with swastikas on their knuckles they still exist at their Frank wait you know like a bunch of football hooligans they have no political you know the via the BNP got 0.1 percent of the vote the last election that far-right is irrelevant barely exist in Britain but the far left has an anti-semitic strain in it and I think it comes out of a worldview that the West is the source of all evil in the world and even if there are other evils they cannot be that's these are evils of the West probably created and in any case they're not as evil as the West is evil and that of course Israel as a Western country in the Middle East and therefore is evil particularly given what they think it's done to the Palestinians and I think this sort of visceral hatred of Israel has tilted into anti-semitism and it has unleashed these forces I mean you ought to see them of what's being said on Twitter and social media for of members of the Labor Party mr. Carvin himself he's being criticized even by his own Corbin Easter's for not doing anything like enough to dampen this down he shared platforms with Holocaust deniers he has called Hamas and Hezbollah his friends Hamas and Hezbollah as constitutional founding powers to sweep Israel into the sea yeah and he keeps on you know he laid a wreath which was supposed to be said for the the bombing of the Israeli bombing of Tunis but actually was next to the Black September gang that found of unique Olympic attack and there are plenty of others around him who think this way as well who basically a lot of the people around him to test Israel and it's made Jews very nervous I don't blame them people like me try to reassure them that they're not on their own but they know their own history yeah and and I think what's upset them more than anything else is that if you would see this I mean if this happened in the Tory Party whoever the Tory leader would have gone out of their way to machine-gunned you'll just get rid of them out we can't be seen to be tainted they would have said but mr. Corben has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do almost anything about it whatsoever and that has made people nervous and it's not gonna go away and Frank feels one of the sale ministers in the Blair government he has recently resigned from the Labor Party on this very issue and there are clearly a lot of other mainstream labor voters who are concerned about this mean to what extent could this help bring down Corden it won't bring him down because he doubt controls the liver part it's a wholly owned subsidiary and that is extraordinary that that has happened in the course of just 5 in a way that Michael fruit of the left in the early days I mean he owns the membership he owns the National Executive Committee he now owns the party apparatus those who work full-time there there's going to be a lot I think of DS elections of moderate MPs it won't bring him down and I don't think you'll see the formation of a new center party I think that's just mission impossible what you might see is up to 20 defections from the Labour Party to stand separately knowingly have no chance of power doing another social-democrats but simply with aim of making sure that mr. Corbyn doesn't become prime minister he could be brought not brought down but he could be denied power by his own people right okay now it's question time and our first question comes from Monica Wilkie who's one of our scholars in the culture prosperity and civil society program Monica thanks Tom and thank you mr. Neil very much for your remarks you were one of Rupert Murdoch's longer serving broadsheet editors but you parted ways in 1994 when Mr Murdoch dies what do you think will happen to print journalism have you given no impression that that's any attention well I mean I think mr. Murdock's desk had nothing to do with that with printed with the future of print journalism what what Rupert Murdoch saw very early on I mean I've not spoken to me he's not spoken to me for 25 years has been mutually advantageous is that he saw that it is you move to digital you still have to charge that if you're producing journalism that nobody's prepared to pay for then you're not producing anything that's worthwhile and just as we've been at the spectator so he with the times and then the Wall Street Journal in the Sunday Times has said you have to pay you subscribed whether you take it in print and paper or you take it in your iPad or your mobile we don't care but either way you pay and now it's turned out to be a huge success in The Times Sunday Times now have about 300,000 paying subscriptions paying 27 pounds a month The Wall Street Journal has about two million digital subscribers the Financial Times to spectate oh we have 50,000 people who pay to take both print and the digital because I think a magazine is more of a weekend lean back experience you might still want to have the paper in front of you I think for newspapers paper is pretty much going to end but there is still money to be made good money to be made if you can produce something that people are prepared to pay for I think Murdoch has been a key part of that I think those who've gone the other way like The Guardian in Britain or even the Daily Mail who've gone for eyeballs gone for volume you know we have 160 million unique users every month that's great but they're not paying a penny to see it and you get digital pennies for the advertising on it so I think the future is and because our words have never been more widely read because of digital so I think the future for high-quality journalism is great and people and subscription is the new business model people are gonna buy things anymore they're going to subscribe even because Gillette priced its razor blades absurdly high because they thought the brand name was strong enough a young American entrepreneur so you know just subscribe to a razor blade tell me how many you need and you get them every month and I think more and more that's why subscription as the model we use let me be devil's advocate Andrew I mean a lot of newsrooms have rationalized in the digital era and increasingly there are a lot of typos poor sentence construction that's evident a lot of copy and not just in this country but abroad isn't that a problem yeah it's a problem but I think we're going through a transition period I mean at the moment we are still we have the capital costs sunk and printing presses which are printing fewer and fewer papers and therefore it's an economic we need to get to a stage where we can basically junk the printing presses and put the money into the digital side I mean we're hiring more people The Times has been hiring more people in London there are other newspapers that have handle things very badly that are firing people I think it's going to be difficult I think if you are The Times in London the New York Times The Washington Post The Wall Street Journal Financial Times Lomond frankfurter I think if you're a national brand that wants to be read round the world you're fine I think the real problem this could be a problem for Australia too if you're the Cincinnati Herald well the Chicago Tribune or The Scotsman or the Yorkshire Post you don't have a global brand and you can't scale up your subscriptions across the world the way the New York Times can or the Times of London or the FT so I do think money will go to the big brands not the regional brands next question Rebecca Lawrence is one of our graduates from our Liberty and society program Rebecca you told you about the British government being weak in the brexit negotiations there's some speculation that after the summer break Boris Johnson might make a tilt at the Toyota leadership Australian style if this happens what are his chances at being successful and is it a good thing if he's successful well you can't do it Australian style because you can't get into a spill in Britain the way you can here is much more complicated so the challenge to a conservative leader where the leader of the Opposition of Prime Minister is that 40 MPs have to write to the sort of shop steward of the Tory 22 committees the back bench gets allcomp cos the back bench committee of tour of Tory's 40 MPs have to write saying the of them no longer have confidence in mrs. May when that hits the 40 misses they then can they can then call her for a vote of confidence among all the back benches if she loses that vote of confidence she's out and she can't run again if she wins she can't be challenged for another year so the people against her are holding back until they see whether they've got the votes or not I mean they're probably a bit more sensible than mr. Dutton but if she loses they then throw their hats and ring and I tell you you don't want to be around because people gonna be blinded by the number of hats of one of the Tory leaders who were thrown into the rear if the constituency is then only among Tory MPs and till you get down to the final two they all drop out until you're left with two they go to the membership in the country and the problem for mr. Johnson will be his unpopularity among fellow Tory MPs he may not make it to the final two that's his difficulty if he makes it to the final two given his name recognition and that the Tory faithful kind of like him he would probably win but if he doesn't make it to the final two he doesn't get a chance to win Robert berry one of our great longtime supporters Robert Andrew where could you commodore give us your views on the future of the euro yeah it's a very good question uh I think the future of the euro is Sam the issue is never the Europe indeed all during the eurozone crisis of 2012 2013 into 2014 the euro stayed very strong it was not a euro crisis he was a eurozone crisis he was a crisis of monetary union not of the currency itself and part of the reason for that is that the world's currency markets assume I think broadly rightly that the Bundesbank stands behind the euro that the Germans are behind it and that therefore is never going to collapse in value and although it's made only limited progress to become an integer to become a currency of international trade the dollars stranglehold in international trade is even stronger than it was ten years ago the currency sells not the problem the problem is this it is that the the eurozone is not an optimal currency area and by that I mean it's a kind of economic term by that I mean it contains too many countries within it who shouldn't all be in a monetary union unless you are prepared to do what they have in America because in a sense New York and Alabama shouldn't be an occurrence a union the disparity in incomes is huge they shouldn't be but America gets rounded because it has a strong fiscal federal budget and federal taxes and then it has money transfers from the richer states to the poorest state so his overall federal taxes and it transfers money seamlessly most Americans don't even know it happens in Nixon's day was called revenue sharing that would be the solution if you want to keep the Club Med countries in with Germany and Holland and Belgium and so on but if you given if you just bring back the remarks I made about Germany if you're a German politician who's going to stand up and say and the way we'll keep the monetary union going is we're going to send 50 billion euros a year from Berlin to Naples well good luck to you and that's the problem is that the the politics now macro has tried to do this but because of what happened to mrs. Merkel it's become mission upon miracle macro wants a eurozone finance minister he wants mutualization of debt so that you the eurozone azar whole issues of the debt not the individual countries he wants the ECB to be a lender of last resort and he wants fiscal transfers and he wants a European budget of about 200 billion that would spend in countries to try and bring them up to a more common standard if you believe in the monetary union as currently constituted none of that is necessarily wrong every part of its also not politically impossible so I think the biggest danger the world faces in terms of an economic shock would be if the eurozone goes back into a recession without any reform at all because it's in no condition to do so it has no ammunition in the armory to fight a recession it can't do anymore qqe the ECB has a third of the euro zone's GDP on its balance sheet now that's how much it's issued a third can't do anymore it's subject to the law of diminishing returns budget deficits fiscal positions are still extended Italy's national debt is one hundred thirty five percent of its GDP even France is ninety five percent of GDP so they haven't got much room on the fiscal side and my nightmare would be that the eurozone goes back into recession without any weapons to fight it at a time when unemployment is still very high and then the hard right forces I was talking about their day will come that's the nightmare scenario it's a bit like Basil Fawlty after that Hotel inspector gives him the long list of complaints and basil says otherwise okay last question Mike Maguire Andrew are there enough young people and fellow travelers in the UK with unlimited well the fellow travelers have a knowledge of communism that young people with unlimited knowledge of communism to elect someone who I've watched in YouTube videos giving lectures at Oxford University with a with a belief in a full Marxist Leninist communist state like Jeremy Corbyn no but that's not why young people are voting for mr. Corbyn I mean young people's knowledge of communism is about is the extent as their knowledge of feudalism it just doesn't matter they don't even know what you're talking about what they do know is that they now leave university with about 40,000 pounds of debt round their necks what we do know is that it's now harder for them to buy a house than ever before from previous generations I mean I was a kid from a council estate who got a decent driver's able to buy my first flat in London when I was 27 unless you have the bank of mum and dad now which I didn't have you've got no chance of buying your own home even in a decent job now you can't do it they've never traveled in British Rail so they think nationalize railways maybe not such a bad thing after all they're nationalized in France and Germany so why should we be so bad and they look at how things have been stacked up against them how the best jobs have gone to interns who already got rich mums and dads who buy their way into internships they can't afford to do it in London because they can't afford to live there and they think things are pretty tough on and I think they're right to think that so they vote for mr. Corben because that's the way to protest against the system they don't really know about communism they wouldn't they never go backpacking to Russia you know they're not gonna do that but they feel that the system isn't great for them and they may be the first generation of living memory there will be less well-off than their parents every previous generation was always better off than their pen so it's a protest vote it's a vote against the kind of British establishment way of doing things it's a vote for where we don't quite know where it will lead but we're gonna give you a kick up the backside anyway because it can't be any worse of course it could be worse but they don't know that so I think that's the reason why mr. Carvin has massive support among young people because most young people don't vote but he may be able to galvanize a bit more often this time so it's not a love affair with communism or even socialism it's a desire to kind of just make a protester by the way things are and for center-right parties this has a long-term fundamental threat to them we know from all political science studies that the tilting point when you move from moderate left to right it's when you start a family and buy your own home and get a mortgage overwhelmingly in Britain and I'm sure it's same here if you own your own home you're overwhelmingly right likely to vote conservative if you rent in the social sector socializing you're overwhelmingly likely to vote Labour if you rent in the private sector which is where more and more young people are being forced into you are still more likely to vote labour and if you've been doing that if you're still doing that at the age of 40 you'll probably end up a Labour voter for most of the rest of your life so it has really serious dangers for the Conservatives who have lost their ability to create a property-owning democracy homeownership among young people number that I mean 25 to 35 year old is now at a 50-year low no with that I'd like to call on my colleague Peter Cody to deliver the vote of thanks for this evening Peter thank you Tom and thank you Andrew towards the end of 2016 former Prime Minister John Howard stood here and look back made some end-of-year comments to to the membership and the first thing he said was the best thing that happened that year for him was that Britain had voted to leave the European Union he got a round of applause and I applauded too because at that stage it looked as though this really was the most positive thing even though it was very divisive in Britain of course but he looked as though this was the most positive thing that could have happened to Britain Donald Trump had just been elected we didn't yet know where that was leading but the I don't think anybody in the room would have foreseen the extent to which it has become so politically fraught and uncertain and that it has seen the consolidation of a far left opposition party in Britain and a teetering Conservative Party that just seems to become weaker and weaker Andrew you have showed us tonight in such a comprehensive terms how the political context has changed over the last two years in particular but your vast experience has helped to identify the very deep roots and the long tail to use your expression which have given rise that the roots that have given rise to this change in context it's been very important I think to be reminded not only of the economic background to this change but the cultural background the economic roots can be traced to the Lehman Brothers crash as andrew has said and the cultural sense of instability can be traced to concerns about migration and security these are important factors that continue to hold fast in in Europe and in Britain particular and just last week or so The Economist reported that the British social attitudes survey shows that the public the British public is keener in raising taxes and public spending than at any time since 2006 so this is a change that we are set I think to see for some time and Andrew you're very comprehensive analysis I think has been deeply informative but we've also really appreciated the way in which you've set what feels like to us uncertain and unstable Australian political conduct because its situation in a broader context so that in fact we do enjoy a great deal of submit' stability we have enjoyed economic stability as you've pointed out for 27 years give or take and our culture is stable the issues of border protection and the issues of a harmonious multicultural society are still ones that that tax the country but we do not face that sort of political instability that you have described in in Britain we're very grateful to you for coming tonight it's been marvelous to hear such a vastly experienced commentator and journalist Tom referred to the four decades of your work that you're not only deeply steeped in in politics the political life of Britain and Europe and the world but also in economic policy and I think that in one of the ways it's one of the ways in which I for me you stand out as a commentator that you have such a thorough grasp of economics that you can unsettle even the the steel iasts treasurers and finance ministers so we thank you very much indeed for coming tonight and for sharing your wisdom and your experience your insights I think as Tom said in some ways it's a it's a depressing message when we look to see what may happen in Britain and Europe in the coming years but I think as Australians we can take heart from the reassurance from such a vastly experienced commentator as you that in fact in this country we have much to be thankful for and we thank you for that [Applause] okay well listen I just want to thank you all of you for being here today CIS would not exist if it wasn't for your support our next event will be September 26 it's on inequality the unions and their media mates all too often talk about how there's a rotten unfairness in our society and how inequality is getting worse we'll debate this issue with representatives from the Productivity Commission and they of course it'll be chaired by my colleague Simon Cowen that's here on September 26 but also thought I'd like to thank Peter weeks for the wines he's supplied the wines tonight from Eden Road wines and again thank you all we've got half an hour to drink be merry and mingle with Andrew Neil thank you so much we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Centre for Independent Studies

Views: 49,652

Rating: 4.5673075 out of 5

Keywords: Centre for Independent Studies, CIS, Australian Politics, British Politics, Europe, Brexit, Dysfunctional Democracies, State of Economy in Europe, European Governments, Future of Europe, Q&A, Far-right, Far-left, Andrew Neil, Tom Switzer, Populism, Neil, Daily Politics, political journalist, conservative, liberal party, Australian politics, no deal

Id: f5jPkOXp_sQ

Length: 83min 1sec (4981 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 06 2018