PATRICIA: President Donald Trump has attacked Ukraine president Zelenskyy calling him a dictator without elections which is of course inaccurate, and saying that Ukraine stole billions from the United States now these statements might be clearly wrong but Donald Trump has made them. You warned about Donald Trump‘s admiration for Vladimir Putin on Q&A. It went viral in fact to the United States. What is your view about what Donald Trump is doing right now?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, he’s running Vladimir Putin lines. I mean if you look at the long interview that Vladimir Putin did with Tucker Carlson, Putin made all these points: that Zelenskyy is a dictator, it’s not a democracy, that Ukraine started the war. These are all Putin‘s points. So we have the shocking, appalling but I regret to say somewhat predictable and predicted situation where the President of the United States is siding with a Russian dictator, a murderous dictator, who has invaded a sovereign democracy, Ukraine, and siding with the invader not Ukraine. So it’s mind blowing but that’s the world we live in. Trump is not an aberration. When he got elected the first time a lot of people felt it was a fluke. The Republican Party were, many of them, perhaps most of them, were ambivalent about him. This time he’s in total command of the Republican Party and he won that election. He won it in the Electoral College and on the numbers. His Vice President is singing off the same song sheet, so this is the new world: the new world of disorder
PATRICIA: So this new world of disorder as you’ve just described it, we’ve had a set of rules since World War II which we’ve adhered to. Are they now broken?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well Trump is in the business of breaking them, for sure. He does not believe in the international rules based order. Trump believes that might is right, so he has the same view of geopolitics as Vladimir Putin or indeed arguably you could say Xi Jinping, although the Chinese would say that they do believe in a rules based order. But let’s face it he’s taking a classic strong man who is saying: I’m big, I’m stronger than you therefore I can do what I want. Look at the way he’s sort to bully Denmark, or Canada, or other countries. So the big question is: what does Australia do about it? Well obviously, firstly we should say, our leaders should say regarding his recent statements that they’re wrong. And that he should stand up for Ukraine. But Trump would say ‘well what are you gonna do about it Australia? I don’t see any Australian troops on the battlefield in Ukraine’. The Australian government isn’t even prepared to have its embassy based in Kyiv, so we don’t have a lot of bragging rights or influence there, but then the question is…
PATRICA: So I just want to know what they should say, because the leaders have been asked today, they have stood up for Zelenskyy.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:They should do that, they should do that.
PATRICIA: Have they gone far enough?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: You can go as far as you like but ultimately, we should be saying, and I think vast majority of the world will be saying this, that what Trump is saying about Zelenskyy is not only wrong factually, but it’s wrong morally. So he is essentially giving, he appears to be at the point of facilitating a victory for Vladimir Putin over Ukraine. Now just contemplate that, it is mind blowing. But then the question is: what does that mean for us? And we have to recognise the world has changed, America has changed. And we cannot assume that we can rely on America in the way we have in the past. Unfortunately the AUKUS submarine deal that Morrison did and Albanese has gone [and] continued with, sacrificed Australian sovereignty, made us more reliant on the United States than ever before, and the timing was exquisitely bad because we are now more reliant on America than ever at a time when America is less reliable than ever. And that’s not just a bug, that’s a feature. Trump is saying to allies you can’t rely on us. You’ve got to do more for yourselves. You’ve got to stand up for yourself. So we’ve got to ask ourselves: are our current arrangements working? And I would say they are not fit for purpose any longer, and we have to spend more money on our own defence but on capabilities and systems that we control. We have to focus on our own sovereignty and defending ourselves, and not running to, not just assuming that, we’re always going be part of some coalition with the Americans. We cannot rely on the new America in the way we have in the past.
PATRICIA: We know your views on AUKUS and particularly the submarine deal but I just want to tease out whether this is a broader view you have beyond the deal on submarines. Is the Australia-US alliance in the same shape it’s always been, or or has it been radically undermined by these latest comments by Donald Trump?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: It is different. Trump is transactional. He is totally focused on American self interest. What is the slogan? America First. So we cannot assume that America has any altruistic regard for Australia. We have got to be able to defend ourselves, and we’ve got to be prepared to stand up for ourselves. Now you know I stood up to Trump, I stood up to Obama for that matter, less colourfully I guess or notoriously. But the reality is our leaders have got to stand up for Australia and we’ve got to have the ability to defend ourselves. So instead of focusing on capabilities that enable us to integrate with the US Navy in the South China Sea or the broader Pacific, we have to be thinking about how we defend this continent, this Australian continent. How we defend ourselves and how we defend ourselves in our region, because we could be alone. We cannot assume that the America that we’re dealing with today, particularly as it evolves over the years to come, is going to be prepared to do much if anything to defend us.
PATRICIA: What is your assessment of the way our leaders, obviously Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, but Peter Dutton too, are dealing with this alliance? They may have backed Zelinsky today but there’s a lot of caution around Donald Trump. They’re obviously not wanting to undermine the alliance, do you think they should be saying other things?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: it’s not the question of the alliance, its that they’re scared of Trump. They’re scared that he will impose tariffs, and so in other words they’re doing exactly what a bully wants you to do which is to knuckle under. So it is just timidity and fear. That’s all. The reality is the alliance is different because the United States has changed, not us. We have got to be able to appeal to American self interest but at the end of the day we have to be able to defend ourselves. One of the problems we have is that there is bipartisan support for AUKUS, particularly AUKUS Pillar 1 with submarines. It was Morrison’s terrible decision, I think it was a catastrophic decision which Albanese, for purely political reasons, adopted. The difficulty is our political system is failing, so if there is a hung parliament, then I hope that the crossbench will ensure that AUKUS is looked at objectively and at these arrangements I looked at objectively and held up to the light of real public accountability, and we can have a proper debate about what we need to do to defend Australia. Because at the moment you’ve essentially got, and I mean bipartisanship is fine, you know people always say ‘isn’t it a pity there isn’t more bipartisanship’. But when you’ve got a bipartisan error, or bipartisan gaslighting, that’s essentially where we are at the moment. We have to recognise the world has changed. America has changed. Trump is not an aberration. He was democratically elected, he has huge following, and he’s got a lot of people in government, in the Congress, that agree with him. So this is the world we live in.
PATRICIA: so you think that the crossbench, and you’re right, all of the polling is suggesting we will have a hung parliament, but the election has to be run and fought, you’ve run in elections, you never know what will happen. But if it is a hung parliament, you’re urging the crossbenches to use their negotiation to shift the support away from AUKUS/ and revisit the way that we approach and deal with America.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think we have to for a start… what I’d be saying, and I say this to all parliamentarians present and potential, we have to be honest and ask ourselves some serious questions. We know that it is most unlikely that we will ever get any American submarines because their Navy will not be able to spare them okay? They will put the interest of their own Navy first. We know that the British submarine industrial base is shambolic. We know that Britain’s defence industry is in disarray. We know that Britain is going to have to focus on Europe. I mean the consequence of America withdrawing support from Europe is the Europeans are going to have to be more focused there. So all of that tells you that that deal that I think was a massive mistake in 2021 when Morrison did it, really let Australia down shamefully, it looks even worse today. And so that we’ve gotta look at that clear eyed, objectively, don’t delude ourselves, don’t worry about offending anybody and just focus on how we defend this country and be in a position to do so standing on our own two feet.
PATRICIA: Now just another question. Very much related. Donald Trump has frozen foreign aid as you know there are reports today that it stopped vital projects in this region that we’re focused on, the South Pacific. Some people say it’s risking lives and hurting US efforts to really woo the region which they had been previously working on. Where does that leave us in this region especially when it comes to China? Do you see the US as abandoning the region?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I mean it is probably too early to say whether they’re abandoning it. But US Aid, America’s foreign aid program, has been frozen as you said. It appears that they’re firing most of the people in that agency. Obviously people will suffer. People will die, you know, hospitals won’t be maintained. Health programs won’t be supported. It will have terrible consequences in the countries that were receiving that aid, but at a strategic level, it will do America enormous damage in terms of its prestige influence. And other countries will have to take up the slack in the Pacific. We will have to do some of that, but China will absolutely take advantage of that. When Trump was first president I think Xi Jinping made a mistake in trying to sort of emulate Trump in belligerence and aggression and you had all that Wolf Warrior diplomacy, the economic coercion we suffered from that as did other countries. That didn’t work for them. But this time they will be more steady, they will seek to be if you like the antithesis the opposite of Trump, and they will take advantage of this. So Trump is not only in the process of giving Putin to win in Ukraine but simply by his conduct he will enable China to expand its influence. Now I’m not suggesting Australia is gonna abandon ANZUZ and become a treaty our ally of China, but there are a lot of countries that are in the middle you know like most of ASEAN for example, that have been trying to balance between the US and China, and if they feel the US is walking away from them they will say ‘oh well will you know? We’ll move more closer to China’, and I’m sure that will happen if Trump continues the way he has.
Watch the interview here https://iview.abc.net.au/video/NU2522C019S00
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