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These Uncomfortable Facts About Immigration in Australia Should Be a Warning | John Anderson
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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [00:16]
Dave Rubin
No, it's not.
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Ryan Reynolds
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- [00:24]
Dave Rubin
Of $45 per three month plan.
- [00:25]
John Anderson
$15 per month equivalent required.
- [00:26]
Dave Rubin
New customer offer first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra.
- [00:29]
John Anderson
Seemintmobile.com when you take God out of being over government, government becomes God. Well, what's government? Whatever the system, including in democracy. Actually it's just people. What's the problem with people? They're flawed.
- [00:40]
Dave Rubin
I just came from Melbourne and it was very hard to get a feeling for the city. Often we were kind of joking. Where are the Australians?
- [00:49]
John Anderson
In Australia we've always been known for being laissez faire. You know, no class system in Australia. A very fortunate society. But I think the downside of the admirable equality, egalitarianism, Australia actually complacency. Now the problem with complacency, you can ignore reality for as long as you like, but in the end you won't be able to ignore the consequences of reality. If you have many people coming in, if they're prepared to merge and build up, it can be fine, everything goes well. But if people are coming in bringing their own beliefs, their own politics, their own approach to life that is actually hostile to the hosts. We know that a certain proportion of Muslim people are radicalized. Quite a high proportion. You don't need too many to make the world a very difficult place. Maybe it's got to get even worse before it gets better. But we do need some sort of wake up call and hopefully before it's too late. That's been the history of the Western democracies.
- [01:50]
Dave Rubin
But is that just baked in that that's what humans will do? We will just wait until it's too late? All right, you're a pro. John Anderson, we are flipping the script. We just sat down for about an hour. Yeah, you got to get rid of that piece of paper. Get that out of here. We're going to flip the script. I suspect I'm going to ask you many of the same things that you asked me and already your body language has changed as the interviewee versus the interviewer. That's, that's how it works.
- [02:23]
John Anderson
Did I give that Away, you have.
- [02:25]
Dave Rubin
To shift a little. Or maybe it's from sitting for a while first. Let me ask you this, because as someone that's been in politics that is now in, well, what do you consider yourself now? Why don't we start with that? If I was to say, what is John Anderson now in the public sense? What do you really consider yourself?
- [02:45]
John Anderson
The flippant comment. Not altogether flippant. If you say to me, who are you? I'm a guy who lives in the bush, the country, was a farmer, now work for my son, who is the farmer, and he, with his lovely wife, run the show. That's sort of, you know, my mindset.
- [03:04]
Dave Rubin
That's the man, John Anderson, and then the public John Anderson.
- [03:08]
John Anderson
I find myself intrigued that there's such a hunger for content, that there is such an extreme, extraordinary suspicion, cynicism about mainstream media, that I'm really aware that people are looking for much more depth. And I'm particularly struck by the way in which young people will pull me up and want to talk about a conversation I've had. Might be this one. It will be this one after, you know, it goes up, oh, I saw you talking to. And can we talk about it? So I'm kind of aware of. It's a funny thing to say that I'm probably more now known as a social commentator than a former politician. Yeah.
- [03:50]
Dave Rubin
Could you have ever dreamed that that.
- [03:51]
John Anderson
Was what it was gonna be? Who knew? You wouldn't have known when you and I started that podcasting would become so big.
- [03:59]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. Well, that's what I said to you right when we sat down. Is that you strike. You see, when I said I'm gonna see John today, it's like I'm seeing an old friend. Because we did. I think the first time we did this was at my house in about 2016 or 17. It's a long time ago. And, you know, nine years is not that long, but in some sense, in the way the world has sped up, it feels like a long time. Do you feel that you can affect things the way you want now, outside of the system? More? Is it more than when you were in the system? Is it less than you were in the system? Is it just a different way that you're affecting things?
- [04:34]
John Anderson
Well, certainly a different way. But it's funny that you should say that because a number of people who say to me, you have more impact now than you did when you were in that talk fest. And, yeah, I think the first thing I'd say there is, I don't want to sound like a clever guy. It's more that I have clever people on and I can create a conduit for people who think clearly and well and have got important things to say, whether I agree with them or not. I get accused of running a conservative podcast. In reality, many of the people I talk to are not conservative or they've come to some conservative positions on key issues. I'll give you a classic example. I often talk to Warren Farrell from the state that you were once in, in California. He'll tell you, he said, I'm a liberal in the American sense, I'm a lefty on everything except the importance of children and fathering. He'll tell you that. But I suppose, you know, there'd be plenty of people in America say, oh, he's deserted the true cause, he's now right wing. What for saying that fathering matters and that our boys are not doing well and we need to reassess this and be less selfish and less keen to pursue what we want to do and not worry as much about the way in which we carry our responsibilities. That makes you some sort of traitor. I think he's incredibly thoughtful and it.
- [05:57]
Dave Rubin
Says more about the modern left, I suppose, than it says about him. Yeah, right. I mean, they've looked to purge. So as you've interviewed people, how do you get the people that are generally not willing to talk to you? Are you able to? Because that has become my great challenge now, professionally, that's become my great challenge.
- [06:15]
John Anderson
This. I, I don't want this to sound arrogant, but I'm going to say it anyway. I actually think that a lot of people from the progressive side side don't want to come on and have to justify their positions in terms of arguments, facts, reason, the basis of so much of our knowledge, which is historical understanding. They don't want to go there. As Ian Hirsiyali puts it, we're in danger of turning our democracy into an emocracy. Democracy can only work when you're clearly committed to reasoned, evidence based debate. You will not produce good policy out of a truncated, a bastardised, a silenced debate. It can't happen. That's the story of the west today. We're not seeing good policy because the debating processes are so tortured, so maligned, if you like, so broken down. And we don't, because we don't think truth matters anymore. Who was it Thomas Sowell made that interesting observation? It's not that little Johnny can't think. He can think. It's not that little Johnny can't feel he can feel. The trouble is that little Johnny thinks that feeling is thinking. And so very rarely do people say no if they're interested in having a debate about something where they've done deep research and where it really stacks up. But there's a lot of people now who have high public profiles that are not doing that research and can't justify their arguments. That's my impression. If it sounds arrogant, I'm sorry, but.
- [08:01]
Dave Rubin
No, I don't think it sounds arrogant. I think that's kind of just where we are at as a species, partly because of the Internet and partly because of success of the west has left us kind of fat and dumb and we're. Well, I guess that would be the next question. Do you think that some of this, what you just described is just a function of the success of the west in Australia?
- [08:26]
John Anderson
Undoubtedly.
- [08:27]
Dave Rubin
That's interesting.
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John Anderson
Undoubtedly. We've always been known for being laissez faire, not a bad thing. Always been known for Jack's as good as his mate, you know, no class system in Australia. They've always been skeptical about tall poppies. A very egalitarian society, a very fortunate society. We've always been pretty well off. In fact, at 1900, it's often said that Argentina and Australia had the highest per capita wages in the world. And Australia, of course, built on that. Argentina didn't. We now seem to be determined, destroyed in pretty short order.
- [09:06]
Dave Rubin
And ironically, Argentina is now going like, yes, that's right, they've returned to some of the things, things that at last.
- [09:12]
John Anderson
A bit of discipline around the place, by which I mean fiscal discipline, not, not trying to deny people their freedom. Yeah, maybe they're licentious, just not their freedom. Big distinction to make. But I think the downside of the admirable, equal, you know, egalitarianism Australian of Australians is actually complacency. Now the problem with complacency, as somebody pointed out, is that you can ignore reality for as long as you like, but in the end you won't be able to ignore the consequences of reality. And I can think of five or six areas where this country absolutely needs to be making choices right now if we're to secure for our children and our grandchildren what we had. And we're not making those choices, we're running away from them. And in fact we're buying them off in a form of intergenerational theft, both economics and social. And I would argue geopolitically.
- [10:13]
Dave Rubin
So what happened to the, you know, we had this sort of comical idea of the Australian, right. I mean, Crocodile Dundee basically became that. I mean, that was what we sort of. And then Steve Irwin and there's a few other versions. And as you know, I've got young kids. So now Bluey has basically taken over the American mind of what an Australian is. But the idea of Crocodile Dundee, that was what was sold to us as Americans. That's what Aussies are now, Obviously, that was a Hollywood version of all that. But where is that man now? Does he exist?
- [10:45]
John Anderson
I wish. Oh, yeah, they exist. And the inner Crocodile Dundee.
- [10:52]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
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John Anderson
And by that I mean he's admirable qualities.
- [10:54]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course.
- [10:56]
John Anderson
You know, I made it in a surprise.
- [10:58]
Dave Rubin
He's pretty admirable in the movie.
- [11:00]
John Anderson
Yeah, he was. But.
- [11:02]
Dave Rubin
But the idea of that man seems to have been abandoned. And that seems to be the thing that you're talking about, then leads to all the political stuff.
- [11:09]
John Anderson
Right. I think complacency is a big part of. I also think there's another strange part of the Australian cycle. This is one of the great differences between Australia and America. You were an experiment in freedom, and a pretty bloody one at times and a pretty cruel one and a tough one. We actually were an authoritarian regime in terms of our origins. This was a convict settlement right here, you know, literally where we're sitting in Sydney, just downstairs, basically, you know, the beginnings of an extraordinary adventure in a foreign land. And there has always been a part of us that has looked to authority figures. And so it's often said of Australians, they're formidable in war and lackadaisical in peace. When the challenge is really there, we can show a toughness and a resilience that's extraordinary. You go back to the Second World War and the North African desert, the first time the Allies actually won anything significant. And before which, the Allies had lost every battle to the Germans, after which the Germans never really won anything. The key to that was actually Australian soldiers and New Zealanders. And General Rommel, who, of course was probably the greatest of the American generals, forced in the end to commit suicide by Hitler, said of the Australian troops, they must be the biggest and finest men the Empire's ever produced. And then if I wanted to take hell, I'd send the New Zealanders in first, then I'd send the Australians in and no one would ever get it back. I think that's still here, and I meet it in some of. This is the really interesting thing, the young people who have given up on mainstream media. You know, I have to say, with great respect to the ABC no one under 30 is listening to you anymore. But I meet them in the streets, they're restless, they're uncertain. Many of them are not showing good numbers on the mental health scores and the, you know, depression, anxiety, even self harm. That's something that we should be hanging our heads in shame about as a society. But the best of them. And I think this is where Jordan Peterson deserves so much credit. He's let us have this argument, he said to the young men, the culture that's saying to you you're toxic just cause you're male is a culture that's got it wrong. Cause you're not. You're not who you should be. We all need to hear that.
- [13:35]
Dave Rubin
Yeah.
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John Anderson
None of us are the people we know we ought to be and should be. But we're not as bad as the Zeitgeist would have us believe either.
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Dave Rubin
What do you make of how that scaled across the West? Because it's the same thing.
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John Anderson
Very similar. Very similar. This is an interesting thing, isn't it? The whole victimhood movie thing. Victimhood thing in the west is spread well beyond the west. You think Superman 1 and Superman 2? Superman 1 is just the hero. He's just a tough guy. He hasn't got issues. Superman 2's got lots of issues. He's still a hero, but he's got lots of issues. And you know, this sort of, this idea, it's culturally, I mean, America's so dominant, of course, particularly in the arts, what have you of victimhood spread out, dare I say it. Maybe Hollywood should have a good look at itself.
- [14:25]
Dave Rubin
I think that ship has long sailed. But we're having a democratization of everything right now. And between AI and the ability to shoot shows like this on way less equipment for way less budget, I mean, Hollywood will become increasingly, increasingly irrelevant, which I.
- [14:39]
John Anderson
And the mainstream media, and they know it. And that just means they're responding precisely the wrong way. A lot of the mainstream media.
- [14:46]
Dave Rubin
Why do you think they are doing that? I mean, why do they never look in the mirror and say, boy, maybe if we switch things up a little bit, we wouldn't be in the precarious financial position we're in or losing our ratings. I mean, why? Because it never happens. I mean, across the board it seems like they never do that.
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John Anderson
No.
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Dave Rubin
Although CBS has just done something different in America. Did you hear about.
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John Anderson
No, what have I done?
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Dave Rubin
So CBS in America, Paramount, which owns cbs, purchased the Free Press, which is Barry Weiss's online.
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John Anderson
I did see that for a lot of money.
- [15:15]
Dave Rubin
150 million bucks and she's gonna now run CBS News. Yeah, that's an interesting move because she's a centrist who came from the left. New York Times and I think if she can recalibrate what they're doing there and the ratings start coming back, I actually think that might get our mainstream to come back. But we shall see.
- [15:34]
John Anderson
Yeah, well, you know, the biggest selling newspaper in Australia by a very considerable margin I think would be the Australian. And you know, I think think you'd have to say it's journalism, broadly speaking, is a notch above. And that's, I think one of the reasons why it still sells well. But it also of course gives rise to the thing that you've just touched on the podcasting sort of game. Obviously massively influential. Now the chairman of the ABC here was unimpressed with the idea that Joe Rogan could host Trump for two or three hour conversation. And he thought that was appalling. He should have been asking the question, how come the ABC can't do this? What has changed? Why are people flocking to listen to Joe Rogan and his guests and his guests? People forget that.
- [16:25]
Dave Rubin
Right.
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John Anderson
You know, people don't come and want to hear John Anderson. They want to hear the people I'm talking to, I hope and assume and.
- [16:33]
Dave Rubin
A little of both. Give yourself some credit.
- [16:37]
John Anderson
Because people are interested in content, people in, are interested. And this is one of the great mistakes that the leaders of the zeitgeist, if I can use that word, the spirit of the age. Cause I don't like that old left and right language very much.
- [16:49]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, I know. I'm trying to drop it as much as possible. The spirit of the age is good.
- [16:52]
John Anderson
Frank Ferrurdi framed it first for me and he was known as a bomb throwing lefty from the 60s in Great Britain. He's now professor emeritus of philosophy, I think, at Kent University. But he first framed it for me. He said that old language now doesn't work. It's really a debate between what Ayaan Hirsiyavi called it, I suppose, democracy and democracy or calm reason. On the one hand, fact based after the evidence. You know, logical debate, finding a consensus versus emotions and feelings. And I just think that is so dangerous. So you and I are playing in the podcast space and we both know though that like everything else, it can be a force for terrific good and terrific bad. It's a cesspool out there, it really is. And now AI is going to make it worse because you don't know who you're really listening to and what truth is. And that's where trust comes in. And we can only hope and pray that there are enough people out there that can be trusted who are putting out enough good material for those who are tapping in and listening to be able to distinguish what stacks up and what doesn't.
- [18:08]
Dave Rubin
It's interesting because I feel a serious pressure around that. I feel it's incumbent on me to tell the truth. I'm going to make mistakes, obviously, but as someone that people tune into, I feel that pressure. But I think there's a lot of people in this space that don't feel that pressure. They just feel I'm talking and I'm just saying whatever I want and it doesn't matter, and I'm just gonna go ahead and do it. And that's become a new challenge now. We escaped the centralized system, and now we're in the decentralized carnival.
- [18:34]
John Anderson
In some sense, I agree with you entirely. And I think there's a mainstream media parallel still. There are some outlets that you can still trust. There are many that, you know, are really just being driven from an ideological position. You get into the podcasting world, same applies. Except that, of course, you've got some podcasters, some communicators who are really still motivated by the almighty dollar. And. And that's where one thing I'll say in this country, that's I think, an admirable part of the Australian quality. People can smell bulldust a mile off. Most Australians still have a nose for what's genuine and authentic, which I think is why they're so utterly frustrated with our politics at the moment. They don't see the sincerity there. You know, here's a thought for you, Dave. In many ways, in the west, we hate the value system now, okay? So we've overthrown our sort of Christian past. We've given away on reason and the Enlightenment, to a large extent. We've gone for. It's all about you. Radical individualism. We raise our young people with the idea that they're the center of the universe. That's our sort of cultural moorings, you know, radical individualism. And when I say our politicians behaving in a way that's consistent with that, we say, hey, don't they get it? It's not about them, it's about us.
- [19:52]
Dave Rubin
Right.
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John Anderson
Do you see the point I'm sort of making?
- [19:54]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. So how do you then tell a better story, as you often talk about? And that, I think, is really what brought you and Jordan together. That became sort of the genesis of What ARC is tell a better story. But then to connect this to something that we talked about a moment ago when we were slightly doing the interviewee interviewer differently, how do you take the secular values that a state should have, add some logic and reason into that and then also not disconnect it from the transcendent or the Christian values or however you want to describe that?
- [20:29]
John Anderson
It's a very, very good question. You see, that's one of the reasons why having participated in government and not for a moment denying its importance, we were a reforming government. People have probably forgotten, but we had a very bad government. In the early 70s, Australian living standards and take home pay flatlined in real terms for 20 years. It only got moving again when we did some hard nosed economic reform, wound back debt, got productivity up, reformed the tax system and suddenly things took off and the American press were describing us as a class act. I remember that at the time and it made a real difference. And one of the problems was we touched on this earlier. I actually think John Howard made the job of being Prime Minister look easy. It's not, it's unbelievably tough. And he was extremely good at it. There's just no two ways about it. When you sat beside him as a deputy and you know how he reads the Australian people, he has a sense for good policy, he knows how to lead and how far you can go. People just assumed, oh, we can have John Howard light. So they went to the man who's now your ambassador in America and he floundered. There's no other way of putting it. He floundered. He was not John hard light. And it's a tough gig. So how do you separate all of that out? Well, I think, unfortunately I heard an American say this. It's not an original quote. When you take God out of being over government, government becomes God. We've made government God. Well, what's government? Whatever the system, including in democracy, actually, it's just people. What's the problem with people? They're flawed. Politicians are all just like every other member of the community. A mixture of what Pascal called the glory and the scum. We touched on it a moment ago. Some of them are just mercantile, some of them are just driven by power or by bucks or whatever it is, thinking they're going to be attractive to the opposite sex if they're a good enough politician. Others genuinely want to serve. I do worry in this country we've lost the distinction. But to come back to the point here, I have a view that government's there to do the things that we agree we have to do collectively and no more. That's another way of saying, I actually think, and Americans understand this better than Australians, that our fundamental freedoms in a democracy like yours and mine, yours is a republic. I know ours is a democracy, but for the purposes of this exercise, you know, they are freedom of conscience and belief. They are freedom of speech, freedom of assembly to meet or not meet, you know, with others. That's critical to freedom. And freedom to use your property rights, own and disperse them accordingly, including your brain power to earn a living. They shouldn't be taken away by some feudal overlord. So if they are essentially invested in the individual, the individual then should choose, have, say it's not for governments, as happened here during COVID say, oh, we'll give you some freedom. It's not the government's gift. They might withdraw them by consent for a while, like drawing the curtains during the blitz in London during the war. Because it's in everybody's interest that we agree that we do that and allow governments to have that power for a while. But this idea that you give them the ability to creep that power is disastrous. So government should be downstream of the culture and culture is always downstream of beliefs.
- [23:59]
Dave Rubin
So, okay, so let's stick with that for a minute. So when we in America saw what was going on here during COVID do you directly connect that? Well, I guess you do you directly connect that to some disconnect with belief. Then how do you reinvigorate that? I mean, if you were still a politician now, how would you do it? Because that's different than being a broadcaster and a communicator.
- [24:23]
John Anderson
Well, you're pretty safe. I'll never be a politician again. Nobody'd vote for me. But look, I see some really fine men and women who are not getting much credit at all at the moment who are trying to do just that. And I'm not sure how you break through. Maybe it's got to get even worse before it gets better. But we do need some sort of wake up call and hopefully before it's too late. That's been the history of the Western democracies, you know, I mean, Britain put off fronting up to the evils of Nazism. Well, so did all of the west until it was so late, it was almost too late. They woke up in time, but only just and only under strong leadership.
- [25:05]
Dave Rubin
But is that just baked in that that's what humans will do? We will just wait until it's too late? I mean, historically, can you think of an instance where people saw it and then we're like, ah, we still got time but let's take care of it now. It just doesn't seem like it's a human reaction at scale.
- [25:22]
John Anderson
Yeah, I do think there is an interesting, and maybe it's not a direct answer, but if you stop and think about it, the decades after the Second World War, an exhausted, you know, Western alliance, but triumphant 1945, 46, you know, and it has to be said, American leadership in particular, I think there was a resolution then that we don't want this to ever happen again. No more holocausts, no more world conflicts. We won't turn a blind eye to injustice and prejudice and cruelty in the world. We'll care about human rights. That last one's very interesting for me because it's an area where Australia has punched way above its weight. We lived in a part of the world, Southeast Asia that was, well, Asia, very poverty stricken in the mid-40s, unbelievably so. And we've played an unbelievable role working with the Americans and other like minded countries in the area of agricultural research and know how the Green Revolution gave people full guts. They could look after their kids, raise them up to get an education. Look at the transformation in Asia that happened under that liberal global order, as it was known after the Second World War and it got us through the Cold War. So that was an era during the Cold War when this country, this is very shorthand and Australians will have heard me say it, a little country of less than 5 million was ready for the First World War. Unbelievably, it was ready for the First World War. We had a trained militia. Everyone had done national service. We had a very powerful navy sailed into this harbour, built in Britain. Both sides of politics supported it and signed off on it and paid for it. And it was powerful enough to expel the Asian. The German East Pacific Fleet from this region secured a homeland. We were less than 5 million people in the First World War, Second World War, completely asleep, absolutely out of it, comatose. And the Second World War was a disaster for Australia. We're only here because of the Americans Cold War. We're alert, we're pretty powerful military. So what happened? We won. The Cold War didn't turn into a hot war. People forget that. What are we doing now? Well, we're comatose again. There are times when with good leadership, look for all of its flaws, for all of the things that went wrong, really. America has been an effective global policeman for most of the last 80 years. I don't know where it's going now.
- [27:50]
Dave Rubin
Isn't it kind of funny that even those of us who are completely pro west feel the need for that qualifier? Like, every time someone says something positive about America, there's this knee jerk need to say for all the things she's done wrong. And it's like we actually haven't done that many things. I mean, there obviously have been some mistakes and there's been some nation building that went a little haywire and everyone can nitpick, but even those that broadly support everything, that know what a force for good it's been still feel a little need for that.
- [28:15]
John Anderson
No more Holocaust, no more world wars. We won't turn our back on poverty and injustice and authoritarian regimes. What happened? No world wars until recently. No holocausts and no programs. And we've lifted countless millions of people, tens of millions of people, billions of people, out of starvation and into something approaching reasonable living standards. Do we give ourselves credit for that? And who were the presiding officers, if you like?
- [28:44]
Dave Rubin
Well, you know, it's not the natural order of things, and yet we think it is. So talk to me a little bit more about what's going on in this country now. Cause I don't think my audience knows too much about. It's rare that I cover Australian politics. It's just, you know, if I happen to be home right now and your current prime minister was there, I'd probably do a story or two. But we don't talk about it that often. I just came from Melbourne and it was very hard to get a feeling for the city. There was no feeling. My entire team, we felt this. We went out several nights. We were about out and about. You couldn't figure out who the population was. You couldn't get a sense. Often we were kind of joking. Where are the Australians? It just didn't seem like the Australians were there. There was a general sense of. Well, it kind of felt like an American blue city. There wasn't a lot of homeless, I'll say that.
- [29:35]
John Anderson
But there was a lot more than there was, though.
- [29:38]
Dave Rubin
And I said that to a few people who said that exact thing to me. Then there's this crazy stuff with the machete attacks and a bunch of other things. But what is happening to the identity of Australians and how different is with the experiment that I just saw in that city? Different than maybe the country at a whole.
- [29:54]
John Anderson
It's a very good question. Like you, we're a federation. We were states before we were a nation. Different process to federation, federalism. Than you but and were not invested in the history of it. That's the interesting thing because there's no bloodshed. It was just done through persuasion and wisdom and a sense that the time had come. So Australians, Americans will all know who their founding fathers are. They'll be able to quote quite a.
- [30:18]
Dave Rubin
Few, not all of us, but, well.
- [30:21]
John Anderson
A lot more than would know him. Very few Australians would know who Deakin and Barton and Parkes and the framers of our constitution. They wouldn't know how they were. And as Thomas Sowells warned, if you forget these things, you can guarantee that you will lose them over time. And that's the great problem. So I guess there's always been a great rivalry between our two greatest cities, which are Sydney and Melbourne. And I remember somebody saying to me when I was a kid, Melbourne is so English and Sydney so American. And that's true, I think, but for some reason Melbourne over recent decades has become more liberal in the American sense, more left wing. Sydney's probably the home now of conservatism as well as liberalism. The two vie for position. Sydney and Melbourne have always been great rivals, but New South Wales I guess dominated by Sydney. Better economic management, it's in much better shape. Law and order hasn't broken down as much. The march of the left through the institutions so called has not been quite as profound. So they're quite different. I found myself on Patrick Bet David's program in Miami where you now live and two hours and I was surprised, you know, always up for the challenge. But it was the topic was whatever happened to the Australians. I'm very aware, unless you want to tell me otherwise, that Americans, in as much as they think about Australia, think, yeah, they're our best friends. We really care about them, we like them, we identify.
- [32:04]
Dave Rubin
There's only a positive connotation. If you say something about Australia, there's no American that's like, oh, I hate Australia or I hate Australia. It's only a positive connotation with, I would say a little bit of, well, we just don't think about them that much. That's kind of what it's become. That's why I like coming here. I like learning about what's going on. And that's why also why I'm curious because what I saw in Melbourne was it didn't strike me that I was in Australia. I could have been anywhere. And that seemed strange to me.
- [32:29]
John Anderson
Yeah, I mean I think the foreign born component of the American citizenry is around 15%. Britain's the same 31% here and another 20% who have one or both parents born overseas.
- [32:41]
Dave Rubin
So how long can that hold? How long can that hold and give you Australia, but constantly.
- [32:49]
John Anderson
Kissen's done a brilliant piece on this called an explainer. I think that's what he calls it, where he talks about if you have many people coming in, if they're prepared to merge and build up, it can be fine, everything goes well. There's probably a limit to how much you can absorb at any given time, even with the best will in the world. But if people are coming in bringing their own beliefs, their own politics, their own approach to life that is actually hostile to the host's underlying foundations, you can run into problems. So I'm profoundly worried by the implications of the importations of ancient hatreds from other parts of the world into our two biggest cities and beyond in recent times.
- [33:30]
Dave Rubin
So why have they been let in? I mean, this is the great question of everyone in the West. Why have these people been let in? Purely. Was this a mistake? Was this purely misguided economic reasoning or was it something more nefarious?
- [33:45]
John Anderson
I think it all stems from the complacency around our own blessings, if I can put it that way. A lack of understanding of how hard won the institutions of freedom actually were and how they need constant nurturing and constant attention being rained on them. And how, in the words of our longest serving prime minister, democracy is actually not a machine. You know, authoritarian regimes, you know, dictatorships, dysfunctional fates states, they can be machines. They churn through people like they're just so much mincemeat. But democracies are not machines, they're meant to be. If you like spirits, as he put it, it's more of a spirit than it is a machine in which we recognize that no matter people's differences or station in life, all souls are equal in the eyes of heaven. You got a rationale for saying that everyone has worth and dignity? That ironically is not the value system of some of the people that have been moving into the west in recent times, looking for the advantages, the material advantages of the west, but not looking for that recognition that we all have to respect our neighbor as much as ourselves. The golden rule, if you like.
- [35:01]
Dave Rubin
So how much of this is then just is really about radical Islam? Because obviously you've said you're talking about this in a broad sense, but you're not really talking about the people from Asia who've moved here. Right? I mean, they seem to be integrating, or at least they don't seem to Be at odds with the Australian system. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but there is a different version of this that seems to be coming in attached with Islam.
- [35:25]
John Anderson
Well, we've seen it on our streets, we really have, and we know that a certain proportion of Muslim people are radicalized. Quite a high proportion. You don't need too many to make the world a very difficult place. I mean, when you've got a serious religious leader in this city after October 7, proclaiming that tears of joy are streaming down my face and chanting crowds in front of the opera house, decrying Israel before Israel has done anything, in the face of the utter bestiality of what Hamas did, you have to wonder about the moral compass of those people and you have to wonder about the people who either are with them or are not discerning enough to see how dangerous that mindset, if you like, that morality, even that spirituality actually is.
- [36:22]
Dave Rubin
So then, the hardest question I can possibly ask you, what do you do? What do you do as a nation that doesn't want to commit suicide?
- [36:30]
John Anderson
You have to exercise leadership. And to exercise leadership you have to. This is Thomas Sowell's point. You've got to understand how we got what we've got. It didn't fall out of the skies, our forebears. This was not a great place as a convict settlement. Who would have thought it would have grown into one of the greatest democratic achievements of all times? You'll never know it, because our children, I know this. I learnt this the other day from a parent. Our children are taught in schools that indigenous people, indigenous Australians, who have often had terrible treatment, that is true, but at law, they were always British citizens. And yet in our schools they're being taught they were considered literally as objects under the Flora and Fauna act of. They never say New South Wales or Australia, just the act. No such act ever existed. You can fact check it with the ABC. The ABC's fact checked it. There was no such act. In fact, although they didn't often take advantage of it, indigenous men in this city, where we are now, in this state, were given the right to vote while America still kept slaves. You know, some of our achievements are quite astonishing in terms of being an open, liberal, prosperous society. And here's the rub. I recently heard the other day firsthand of a Vietnamese man who came here with his family, his two children, and he was so delighted. He wanted to be part of this country and he said to his kids, now, you study hard at school, you be builders. Go back to David Brooks tend the garden, prune the trees, cultivate the soil. This is a wonderful country. We've come to, his kids come home and start saying, dad, this is a terrible country. This is an illegitimate country. All we've done is dark deeds. Of course we've done dark deeds. We're human. You've done the wrong thing occasionally, I dare say. I've certainly done the wrong thing occasionally. None of us are perfect, so you've got to form balanced judgments. This has been an unbelievable achievement, this country, extraordinary. And I say that with some feeling. Some people say, why do you mention it? But my family came here in the 1820s. They were free, they were not convicts. And this land has been unbelievably good to my family, including to me.
- [38:58]
Dave Rubin
So as you watch some of the things that we're discussing, by the way.
- [39:02]
John Anderson
There'Ll be many who say, oh, yeah, that's all very well for you to say that. Right, sure. But actually, the truth is that for vast numbers of people, it's been an incredible land of opportunity, and for those, it's not, you know, at least they've been recognised as having rights at law. And we've tried to put in place the right safety nets and give people educational opportunities so they can prosper. I don't want to sound insensitive to people who've not found it such a great experience, but by gee, I mean, name me a country. I used to ask the kids this when they came to Parliament House. You had school groups, you know, if you're not so sure about Australia, where would you rather live? Occasionally they'd say, America.
- [39:40]
Dave Rubin
I would say, America's probably the only thing.
- [39:43]
John Anderson
But if they did nominate another country, it was always right.
- [39:46]
Dave Rubin
They didn't want to go back to a caste system. I would imagine America would probably.
- [39:49]
John Anderson
Right, always a democracy.
- [39:52]
Dave Rubin
So I get you on the idea level and I get you on the Thomas Sowell portion of this, but if you were in politics right now, what would you do about this integration problem, or whatever we want to call this?
- [40:05]
John Anderson
I would be saying every day that if you come to Australia, you've got to help build the country up, not tear it down. If you don't want to build it up, this is not the country for you. And I would be saying it's not good enough that less than half of our citizens have had a proper civics education course study. That's the government's own work that's revealed that if you don't understand the country, then you can't make it work. If You've come here because you want to enjoy our material well being, our freedom, the opportunity to be yourself, understand how it happened and don't be part of. Of what is tearing it down. Leaders have to lead. A leader's got to have a vision, like people, you know, cry out for want of a vision. Where's the vision? What sort of society you want to be? How's it been? Clearly set. It's not good enough to talk about vague notions of diversity as strength. And we've always believed in a fair go. You've got to spell it out, you've got to say what it is, you know, the valuing of the worth and the dignity of every Australian. And if you can't respect the worth and dignity of your neighbour, this is not the country for you. It's not the country for you. You've got to be able to articulate that. We've lost the art of persuasion. It's not easy in a podcasting age. I know. In an age where. No, it has. It's all changed. Oratory in the age of the digital, because oratory is critical to leadership. You've got to be able to move a crowd, and we seem to be desperately short of people who can move a crowd. And then you've got to have about you the personal qualities for others to say, especially in this country, yeah, they're fair dinkum, they're real, they're authentic, they care about me. They wouldn't ask me to do something they wouldn't do themselves. That's where one of the really endearing qualities of Australians, they pick that up really quickly. Glibness never works in Australia.
- [42:00]
Dave Rubin
So are you hopeful right now for the country? Do you feel that the problems that we've talked about and I don't want to only focus on the problems. I mean, this is an incredible, incredible nation. Also, the geography here and the fact that you.
- [42:12]
John Anderson
Wonderful.
- [42:13]
Dave Rubin
Well, the fact that you're the size of the United States, with basically a tenth of the people barely. Right. We have about 350 million.
- [42:20]
John Anderson
17 or 18. Right.
- [42:21]
Dave Rubin
I mean, it's really. It's something else. I mean, you guys have room to grow. I mean, much of the world is kind of getting at its sort of limits, you guys. I know it would take a lot of work and you'd have to turn a lot of, you know, unusable and in some sense to something very different. But, I mean, how do you feel about the state of the country and the hopefulness and all that?
- [42:40]
John Anderson
I believe the institutions of our Society are still all there and still fit for purpose if they're used properly. I really believe that. So whether you talk our parliaments, whether you talk our courts, whether you talk our police systems, our education system, they're still there. They just have to be used properly. They've got to reinvigorate commitment to them, faith in them, you know, the willingness to work hard, to build up, not tear down, to be engaged. This is the age of complacency and disengagement. But the other thing that really gives me encouragement, look, it's probably because they self select, because they're people who are interested in podcasts. But it's the extraordinary fact that people I've never met and people who wouldn't remember me from politics, some of them weren't even born, you know, they pull me up and they want a yarn. That's not an American expression. What do you call a chat on the sidewalk? Somebody pulls you up on the sidewalk and they want to cheer you up.
- [43:39]
Dave Rubin
If you're watching Curb youb Enthusiasm, we call it a stop and chat.
- [43:41]
John Anderson
A stop and chat. There you go, there you go. And I'm just so often struck by their thoughtfulness. Here's a great challenge for all of these progressives running humanitarian courses and including things like law in the universities. Do you realize just how few of your students actually take you seriously and respect you? Because many of the best and clearest thinking of them don't for a moment. They see through you, mate. You know, get real. And not only therefore by failing in their proper job. I think a lot of our academics are they shortchanging people's learning capacity, they're encouraging cynicism and I think that's a problem. I'd have to say I'm a bit dismayed sometimes when I talk to younger politicians. Too many of them are too interested in the buck and the power. We've washed out the idea of service. Service really matters. I think the west would be a far happier place, not just a better place and a more effective place, a happier place if we actually talked more about responsibilities than we did about rights.
- [44:57]
Dave Rubin
We'll see if we can make that happen. I'm not sure we can. Even from an American perspective, I'm not sure we can do that because we're responsibility. It's a heavy load.
- [45:07]
John Anderson
What's the American? I was quite struck by this sort of self effacing nature of it. Was it a seal's motto? I'll do everything I can to avoid giving offence and double my efforts? Not to take it.
- [45:21]
Dave Rubin
We definitely could use more of that.
- [45:23]
John Anderson
Yeah, I think we could, John.
- [45:25]
Dave Rubin
We will continue doing this and see which way the west goes, hopefully in the direction we're pushing for.
- [45:32]
John Anderson
Well, thank you and I'm encouraged that you want to carry forward Charlie Kirk's work. I think those were your words. Good to see you my friend.
- [45:44]
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