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Democracy Sausage with Mark Kenny
Malcolm Turnbull: Australia post-coal
On this special episode of Democracy Sausage, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull discusses the treatment of former Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate, the abandonment of the National Energy Guarantee, and special interests in Australian politics.
Is Australia at risk of being seen as a ‘Trumpian government in exile’ because of its unwillingness to do more to reduce emissions? Are moderates in the Coalition being ‘held hostage’ on climate policy by the Murdoch media and those in the party room who don’t believe in the science of climate change? And should the government apologise to former Australia Post Chief Executive Officer Christine Holgate over the Cartier watch saga? On this episode of Democracy Sausage, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull joins Professor Mark Kenny to discuss climate politics and policy, the treatment of women in public life, and much more.
Malcolm Turnbull AC was the 29th Prime Minister of Australia from 2015 to 2018. He served twice as Leader of the Liberal Party, from 2008 to 2009 when he was Leader of the Opposition, and from 2015 to 2018.
Mark Kenny is a Professor in the ANU Australian Studies Institute. He came to the university after a high-profile journalistic career including six years as chief political correspondent and national affairs editor for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and The Canberra Times.
Democracy Sausage with Mark Kenny is available on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We’d love to hear your feedback for this podcast series! Send in your questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes to podcast@policyforum.net. You can also Tweet us @APPSPolicyForum or join us on the Facebook group.
This podcast is produced in partnership with The Australian National University.
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Not here to fix Labor
47:35|Is Labor's managerial, middle-of-the-road style a sensible way to steer through rough seas, or does it leave room on the left for someone selling a bigger vision? If Pauline Hanson can do it to the Coalition, can Shoebridge do it to Labor? Or is Australia simply heading for a multi-party era where every seat is marginal? On this episode, Professor Mark Kenny and Dr Marija Taflaga look at what was behind the Greens' first truly competitive leadership contest. They discuss why personal relationships carry so much weight in a party room that could fit in a minivan, and whether the Greens are really just a privatised left faction of the ALP.The Alchemy of Leadership
56:53|What did John Howard understand about survival and self-correction that his six successors never quite grasped? Why do so many of our prime ministers trace their drive back to fiercely ambitious mothers — and what does that pattern tell us about who gets to lead? Is the Liberal Party's current unravelling the price of clinging to the "Howard settlement" long after the country moved on? Historian and biographer Paul Strangio joins Mark to dissect what makes — and breaks — an Australian prime minister, drawing on his newly shortlisted book The Alchemy of Leadership: Seven Australian Prime Ministers in a Turbulent Twenty-First Century.Forty Years On
35:26|What are the five forces reshaping Australia's economy and society over the next four decades? What it will take to keep Australians' faith in government alive while managing them? What can younger Australians expect from future governments?Treasurer of Australia and ANU Alum the Hon Dr Jim Chalmers MP joins Mark Kenny and Liz Allen on Democracy Sausage to unpack the 2025 Intergenerational Report.New game, new rules
58:57|Is too much political capital being put into meaningless foreign policy platitudes rather than defining what modern Australian security looks like? If Australia's shared values with its allies are contradicted can we still rely on those principles to steer policy with them? Can Australia take a globally prominent position in petitioning the US to end the wars that fundamentally threaten Australia's national security?On this episode of Democracy Sausage, Allan Behm — a 30-year veteran of the Australian Public Service across defence, diplomacy and the Attorney-General's Department, and a former senior adviser to now-Foreign Minister Penny Wong — joins Professor Mark Kenny to discuss his new book, New Game, New Rules: A Foreign Policy for Dystopian Times, and why breaking Australia's "stranglehold of dependency" starts with an honest reckoning with our own identity.Whose Side Are You On?
01:01:52|Is Australia's looming digital duty of care about censorship, as its critics claim, or about handing control back to the people whose attention is being sold to advertisers? With Meta's $18 billion US settlement still fresh and an exposure draft due out within hours, independent MP for Curtin Kate Chaney makes the case for a broad duty on tech platforms to prevent foreseeable harm — and why she thinks this fight has nothing to do with free speech at all.THEN: from Perth's outer suburbs to a state election in Germany, the populist right is romping home wherever voters are abandoning the major parties. So why isn't the same thing happening on the left? After One Nation's rout of Labor in the Secret Harbour by-election, the Australia Institute's Richard Dennis and the University of Sydney's Stewart Jackson join Mark and Marija to ask whether the Greens have got too clever by half, too comfortable inside parliament, and too reluctant to just say whose side they're on.Three Shocks
01:00:07|For the first time since federation Australia's population is made up of a majority of migrants and their children, changing the electoral maths for our politicians - have our leaders caught up to the times or are they getting left behind? Labor has learned how to win an election, but does the Liberal party have what it takes to break their losing streak? As trust in both our allies and our key trade partners has waned will our past inform our future?Mark and Marija tease who we, as a nation, are becoming in the 21st century with the author of Three Shocks, George Megalogenis.Hostile complexity
48:04|Why has David Farley's and Pauline Hanson's immigration number not matched up — and does it even matter to One Nation's supporters? What do focus groups really say when people explain why they're giving up on the major parties? If many disaffected voters want a left-wing agenda of "taking back what we own," why is it the populist right keeps cutting through? RedBridge's Alex Fein joins Democracy Sausage to talk about the confusion at the heart of One Nation's immigration pitch, the voters who feel failed by the political class, and why the simplest story is winning.Insiders and Outsiders
58:18|Twenty-five years ago, Insiders went to air for the first time – the morning after the Aston by-election, before smartphones, before social media, and long before anyone had to explain what a fax machine was. So how much of what's changed in Australian politics since has really been about the politicians, and how much about the technology reshaping how they communicate and how we watch? Is the feminisation of politics and the press gallery a quarter-century story, or something that's only really happened in the last five years? And now that everyone gets their news from a different, algorithmically sorted feed, is there still such a thing as a shared public – or a shared set of facts – for a democracy to argue over? Historian Anna Clark, Professor of Public History at the University of Technology Sydney and author of Making Australian History, joins Democracy Sausage to mark Insiders' 25th anniversary and take the long view on how politics, the media and the public conversation between them have been transformed.You win some, you lose more
46:40|Why has the government fallen so far short of the Murphy Report's recommendations despite around 80 per cent of Australians wanting gambling ads banned? How did an under-resourced Northern Territory regulator end up overseeing a $34 billion-a-year industry? Why do inducements — not just the eye-watering ones, but the humble "here's $100, have a punt" kind — count as predatory when someone's trying to quit?Gambling researcher Charles Livingston joins Democracy Sausage to unpack the politics behind the federal government's gambling reform package.