39th Daniel Mannix Memorial Lecture

39th Daniel Mannix Memorial Lecture

Melbourne University

 22/10/2025

The Hon Malcolm Turnbull AC, 29th Prime Minister of Australia

**Check against delivery**

"Defending Australia's independent democracy in a might is right world."

Thank you very much. And Miles, thank you also for your very gracious and just acknowledgement of country, too.

My friends, we are living in a very different world to the one we were a decade ago. And it's not just the technological changes that we see around us that operate at accelerating pace, but we are today living in an overtly might is right world.

Now you might say, if you're a little bit cynical, and you're entitled to be cynical particularly about political matters, that might has always tended to be right if not just. It's always been able to prevail. But the post-second world war order that democracies like Australia participated in establishing, including of course the United Nations were founded on the principle that might was not right.

The United Nations Charter sets out that the rights of all nations are to be the same. Large nations, small nations, middle sized nations. That respect for all countries’ autonomy, sovereignty is fundamental.

And why was that?

Because the global community had learned the lesson of two terrible world wars and seen what happens when the rights of smaller countries can be trampled.

The founder of Newman College and the Archbishop in whose honor this lecture series is given, Daniel Mannix, understood very keenly the rights of small countries, and in particular his own, Ireland. And he, firstly as the coadjutor archbishop, the deputy archbishop, and then as the archbishop, campaigned in Melbourne against not only the Prime Minister of the day, Billy Hughes, William Morris Hughes, not only against the government of Australia, not only against almost unanimous opinion, the big end of town, a big end of every town, but against the British Empire itself.

He made the case for an independent Ireland. He made the case for an independent Australia. And he made the case for freedom. 

He said more than a hundred years ago: “why should Australians be conscripted to fight in a war for freedom when they are being denied freedom in their own country?”

“Why”, he said, “should we be dragged into a war to ensure that Germany cannot occupy Belgium when Britain has no more right to occupy Ireland?”

This sounds bold stuff today, but can you imagine the courage that it took to make that case a century ago? Extraordinary.

And not just the courage of Daniel Mannix.

I didn't ever know him… but Father Bill, where is Father Bill? He remembers him. But there's a few of you who may have known Daniel Mannix, but he was a solitary austere figure. 

But he could not have made that case and that campaign if he had not had the courageous support of his flock, of his people, of the Catholics of Melbourne, at least a majority of them. He couldn't have had those huge parades, those gigantic public meetings with tens of thousands of people present to hear him speak, the huge St. Patrick's Day parades, he couldn't have done that. So there was courage in the bishop, but there was courage in the people as well.

And nowadays, my friends, we are being called on to show that kind of courage.

Courage for independence, belief in ourselves, a determination to be resilient, and to be self-reliant. 

Now I said at the outset that we're living in a might is right world, and I talked about the post-second world war order.

The leader of that order was the United States of America. We used to talk about the President of the United States as the leader of the free world. And American presidents, and you can say whether they got it right or got it wrong, you can question whether they were being somewhat hypocritical or somewhat self-interested, or had mixed motives, but at least they would always make the case that they were taking actions in international affairs, including military actions, in order to defend and uphold democracy.

Right or wrong. Often misconceived, often counterproductive, but nonetheless that was their goal. 

President Trump, and he's often accused of lying, but in this respect, he is very honest. He does not pretend to be interested in those values whatsoever.

He not only believes might is right, he says he believes it. He practices it. He posts on his social media site, "My golden rule is he who has the most gold makes the rules." And he exerts power relentlessly in order to achieve his goals and America's goals. 

The slogan of his movement is “America First”, and that means America will be advantaged at the expense, if necessary, of others. The whole global tariff campaign is not a win-win. Often when people say “this is a win-win deal”, they really mean they're going to win a bit more than you. But nonetheless, he doesn't even pretend that it's a win-win. It is about America first, America as the most powerful country, as he regularly reminds us, the most powerful military, and he uses that power to advantage the United States. 

Now, what that means - and we have to be cleareyed about this - is that Donald Trump's view of power and the responsibility that power brings is not very different to that of Vladimir Putin. I'm not suggesting that they are to be compared as people…I’m not suggesting Donald Trump is planning to invade a country, in fact, he's actually quite the opposite of a warmonger. I know that. I've talked to him about it at length, and you can see that from his own statements and actions. But he believes that strength is what matters. Power is what matters. 

Now, this is a very, very different world.

And to give you an example of how much the world has changed, go back to 2017.

I was still prime minister at that point. We published…a foreign affairs white paper. We haven't published one since. Probably about time Penny Wong got her department to do another one. But that is no criticism. I'm trying to be very objective…

I mean Daniel Mannix was very good at criticism. I must say he had a sort of almost Keatingesque ability to sledge people. I particularly like that way he used to get into Billy Hughes. I'm digressing now, but I'm an admirer of rhetoric, particularly of the more deadly kind.

He talked about Billy Hughes having been to England and hanging around with duchesses and having spent time with the monarchy,  and he said “but spending a weekend at Windsor doesn't make you a gentleman”. 

That's quite cutting. 

Anyway, getting back to Trump… and what we're facing now. So, we've got a President whose view of the world, as I say, has got more in common with Putin than it does with any single one of his predecessors in modern times.

And so we are now in a situation where we no longer can say that our values are aligned with the United States in the way they had been for many decades. The 2017 Foreign Affairs White Paper listed five objectives of our foreign policy. I won't go through them all, they're not the most eloquent document in the world. 

But essentially they were all about respecting the rights of smaller nations, defending the rule of law, international rule of law, opposing protectionism, opposing terrorism - keeping Australia safe from terrorism, and supporting development in the Pacific. 

Now, of those five areas the only one that you could unequivocally say, I would hope that the United States is absolutely committed to, is keeping us all safe and their country safe and our country safe from terrorism. 

It's hard to say America's committed to development in the Pacific after it's abolished USAID. And certainly an administration whose leader says ‘tariff’ is the most beautiful word hardly believes in free trade. Protectionism is what they're all about. 

So how does Australia deal with that?

Well the reality is we have to deal with the America we've got. We have to deal with the administration we've got. We have a stake in the United States political determinations, but we do not have a vote.

We have to get back to focusing on ourselves,  and  talking about putting our nation first and our interests first. And that means we have to make sure that we are independent, that we are not dependent on others, particularly on the United States, and we have to become more self-reliant. 

Some people would say, depending on what media outlet you read, that talking like that sounds anti-American. It's not. 

In fact JD Vance, potentially Mr. Trump's successor, recently praised at length General Charles de Gaulle who as President of France, took France out of the NATO integrated command and insisted that France retain total sovereignty over its own nuclear forces. And he said de Gaulle was right. That is  not a view that presidents Kennedy or Johnson shared at the time. For Australia to be more independent, more self-reliant is not being anti-anybody, or opposing any country, let alone the United States. It is ensuring that we are best able to manage our own affairs in the world. 

So what does that mean?

That means firstly that we must have complete sovereignty over our own military capabilities. Now you've probably heard me criticise the AUKUS deal….but the bottom line is this:  that we should ensure that every single one of our military capabilities is sovereign. That is to say it is able to be directed, deployed at the direction of the Australian government without the concurrence or consent of any other party. And you cannot say that about this nuclear submarine program that we are apparently going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on. 

The second thing we have to do is work with other countries that are likeminded. We have to recognize that for a smaller nation like Australia, we have got to find our security not solely in an alliance with the United States, but in working with our neighbors, particularly in the region. We've got to look at our security less as a series of spokes going into hubs in Washington or even Beijing, but rather as a mesh, working with our neighbors. 

I can give you a good example of how that can be done, and how that was done. You may remember there was a big, very ambitious trade deal in the Asia-Pacific region called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And Donald Trump, when he got into office in 2017, he pulled the United States out of it. At the time, most people thought that the deal was dead. It involved 12 countries: Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Singapore, Malaysia, a whole host of nations round the rim of the Pacific.

And everyone thought the deal was dead. John Key and I - then the Prime Minister of New Zealand - concluded towards the end of 2016, we thought Trump would pull out. And we thought, maybe we should try to keep the deal alive regardless of the Americans pulling out. And we did. In fact, it was great testimony to Lucy and I as joint advocates. You mentioned the spy catcher trial earlier, we did that case together. We've done a lot of joint advocacy over the years, and we did a very good job in January 2017 together persuading Shinzo Abe, then the Prime Minister of Japan, that Japan should stay with the deal and keep it going, even though the Americans have pulled out. And Abe was initially very concerned that this would offend Trump and I kept on saying “look Shinzo, out of the room, out of the deal…they pulled out, they can't complain, we've got to keep going”. 

And we did. 

It had a few ups and downs and hiccups and so forth and dramas, but we got there. We ended up with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it survived. It gained two meaningless adjectives, comprehensive and progressive, which is why it's now known as the CPTPP. And we lost one member, but of course we've now gained the United Kingdom. This is the single most ambitious, modern trade deal, and it was done just as the window of doing free trade deals was coming down, just as the new era of protectionism was arriving. So, we just slid through a window that was just about to close. 

But that was an example of countries that had been going along with American leadership on a project waking up and saying “we don't need American leadership here, we can do this ourselves. We can take our destiny into our own hands”. And sovereign autonomy is what we have to do more of. 

Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, spoke about this earlier in the year at the Shangri-La Dialogue conference in Singapore, and he talked about the CPTPP as an example of this, and talked about how the European Union should aim to work closely with the CPTPP. 

In other words, those nations that still believe in free trade, those nations that do not believe they have a right or an obligation if you like, to effectively impose tariffs on the rest of the world as a price of doing business with them, as Donald Trump does, those of us who still believe in free trade and the rule of law and open markets should work together. 

And that is why diplomacy is so important, and why it's so important for us to be seen as an independent actor.

Now I can tell you from my own experience in public life, and particularly as Prime Minister, the more Australia is seen as an echo of the United States or anyone else, the more we are seen as a rubber stamp for Washington, the less credibility and the less influence we have. One foreign minister in our region said to me on this very topic, he said, "The more you sound like you're echoing Washington, the less notice anyone takes and the less motive we have to talk to you because we may as well just ring head office, direct."

So that's real. A strong independent Australia, a strong sovereign Australia, is absolutely critical. 

Diversifying our trade, whether it is from China or the United States, making sure that we are independent, and that we focus on our own sovereignty, not relying on a big brother, is absolutely vital for us to cope with this might is right world. 

Let me move now to the domestic sphere, because might is right is linked to this move, this rejection of democracy, this rise in what people talk about - authoritarian populism - some people talk about it [and] say it's protofascist or fascist, talk about these parties whether it is in the United States, or individuals in the United States, or in Europe who are defying the law, attacking judges, using the legal system to attack their opponents, and seeking to coerce the media to their point of view. It is remarkable that the least democratic country in the European Union - Hungary - which has a Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, who still has elections, but he has done everything he possibly can do to stop the opposition from winning.

And he proudly says this is an illiberal democracy. He is seen as a poster child, a hero, of a lot of people who now claim to have this [view], what they call “conservative”, but really is a form of authoritarianism.

 Now this is terribly dangerous. 

I mean we have all seen this film before sadly, many times.

How do we avoid that happening in this country? We've got a couple of things going for us in Australia which we should be very proud of but never complacent about.

Firstly, we have compulsory voting.

We've had that for a hundred years, more than 100 years in fact, and we enforce it. The Electoral Commission estimates that about 98% of all of the people in Australia who are eligible to vote are actually on the electoral roll, and that at an election generally 91, 92, 93%, depending on the election will vote, and it varies from electorate to electorate, but with a very very high participation rate. 

Miles mentioned legalizing same-sex marriage. You may remember, some of you, that there was a postal ballot before that where we consulted the Australian people that was completely voluntary. 80% of Australians participated. Well over 60% voted yes, which is why it became law. But Australians, in other words, not only are forced to vote, but we're happy to vote. Maybe it's the sausage sizzle. 

The second thing we've got going for us is preferential voting. That together with compulsory voting pushes our politics to the centre. We are, politically, a less polarised society than many other countries, particularly the United States. 

Thirdly, we have an independent electoral commission which determines the boundaries so we don't have rigged boundaries. Now if you compare us with the United States, where the boundaries are mostly determined by politicians, most congressional districts can only be won by one party or another. So if you're in a district that can only be won by the Republican party, the only contest that matters is the Republican primary in which the Republican enthusiasts, the rusted on members, are the only ones that vote. And so naturally, that encourages candidates to swing off to the right and similar conclusions for the gerrymandered Democrat seats.

And of course, they don't have compulsory voting and they have first past the post so they don't have preferential voting. So that makes their politics more polarized. So in other words, institutions really matter but we've got to constantly focus on defending our parliamentary system and our electoral system and ensuring that it continues to deliver outcomes that bring people to the centre.

The object of parliaments, the object of politics, should be to get people together to resolve things at the centre, and compromise, and listen to the other party, and cut a deal. That's what it's all about. That's what politics should be all about rather than winner takes all. 

The other thing that we have, which I think is very much under siege, is we still have a shared public square in Australia. I think the ABC plays a very big role in this as a public broadcaster, but I think we still, by and large, share the same facts. That is not true in many other countries, certainly not true in the United States where people are living in their own tribal echo chambers, getting media that basically panders to them, whether it's social media or indeed curated media like cable TV news channels, which are basically telling them what they want to hear. That is really dangerous because then once again people are polarized and they're not able to come together in the centre. 

We really have to do everything we can to ensure that we preserve a respectful public square where competing forces can debate and resolve issues in a rational fashion. I know that sounds strange for a politician to be saying, a former politician to be saying, but it is absolutely critical. 

We can see what is going wrong in other places. We've got those good assets there, but we can't be complacent about it. 

So, that's why there is so much  focus on social media, ensuring that you have protections from abuse of social media.

In fact when I was Communications Minister I set up what was initially the Children's e-Safety Commissioner, now the e-Safety Commissioner. 

We are dealing with a rapidly changing media environment, and so the regulatory responses are going to change and some of the measures will work some of them won't. But it is absolutely critical to make sure that we do everything we can to avoid that type of tribal echochamber situation that you see in other countries, and in particular in the US. 

Whether we're dealing externally, or whether we're dealing with our own domestic affairs, we have got to be able to strengthen our democracy. And we do that by being independent, by being self-reliant, by having a diversity of allies and friends and relationships, making sure that we are not beholden to just one nation, whether it's the United States or anyone else, and internally, we do that by investing in and respecting our democracy and the importance of respectful, well-informed debate. 

And we have to call people out who tell lies. 

We've got to do that. 

What has happened, and Trump has been a master of this, he's a master of distraction, he will say one thing that's outrageous, and when people say hang on that's not right he has said something else and moved on to another one. And he’s not being held to account in the United States. We cannot allow that to develop here. You look at Anthony Albanese or Sussan Ley and you say, "Well, I don't think they're going to turn into a Donald Trump." But who knows? Nobody thought Donald Trump would be President either.

So, we've got to make sure that our system remains one that is grounded in respect. 

Let me finally say something about the rule of law. I imagine there's a few lawyers here tonight.. 

A democracy is not just majoritarianism. .

If you look at the great sweep of history - philosophers, playwrights, look at Coriolanus,  Shakespeare's play, Shakespeare himself, pretty skeptical about democracy because to them it seemed like mob rule. 

Just because the majority of the people want to do something doesn't mean it's right or fair, and it doesn't mean that the people, the minority, are being protected. So what the rule of law does is it empowers the majority at the same time as it constrains the majority. The rule of law is what makes a democracy work, and that is under siege in so many places internationally. 

Look at the economic coercion you see from China and the United States, and each of them accuses the others of using economic coercion, they both do it, frankly. They're both practicing might is right. China puts tariffs on barriers to our exports because they don't like what Scott Morrison said about the spread of COVID. Donald Trump puts massive tariffs on Brazil because he doesn't like that his friend, Jair Bolsonaro, is on trial and sent to prison. It's a long list. It's literally a very, very long list of what is going on. And look at us, look at our situation. We have these tariffs imposed on us. Trump said to Albanese, "Oh, don't worry, they're low tariffs." And they are compared to other countries, but they're all completely in breach of the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement. 

What about the tariffs that are being imposed on Canada? The threats to make Canada the 51st state? They're in breach of a free trade agreement Trump signed himself in 2019.

So, international law is not being respected. But also, you see it under siege. You see in the United States judges being attacked, threatened, bullied, you even see that now in the United Kingdom, some of the things that are being said by Farage and Robert Jenrick in particular about judges in the UK. 

The rule of law [and] defending the rule of law internationally, is obviously in our interest. We're a medium-sized country, we are not a superpower, so might is right absolutely does not work for us, and domestically the rule of law is just as important, but there we obviously have much greater agency. 

When people have this “whatever it takes approach”, and “the law is irrelevant, get out of the way”, that is not the way to go. A sensible liberal centrist recognizes that you've got to be able to negotiate. 

You've got to be able to respect people and ultimately you've got to be able to respect the decisions of the courts. So the times that we're living in call on us to have courage.

Not just courage for leaders like Daniel Mannix, but courage for all of us. 

There's no point sitting back and being complacent. There's no point sitting back and saying, "Well, it's not affecting me." 

“This out group, this smaller group of people with different political views or different ethnicity, I don't have to worry about them.” 

All of us require the defence of the rule of law,  but none of us will get it in the long term unless we are committed to democracy - the rule of law - for all of us. 

Thank you very much for your time. I look forward to your questions.

** ENDS **