John Anderson – Political Leader – BONUS
John Anderson is the former Deputy Prime Minister in Australia. He was part of a reformist government under the Howard Administration (a Liberal – National Coalition) that has been Australia’s longest standing government of our time. If you have not yet heard John’s story of how he grew up on a farm, got into politics, and how he allowed his faith to define his identity, worth and work, you might want to first check out this episode.
In this bonus content, we get into John’s views a bit more. He shares his father’s experience at war, how a politician might look at the issues facing western society, and what he thinks a Christian politician should respond during a pandemic.
If you’d like to hear more thought-provoking conversations on politics, values and culture from John Anderson, you might want to check out his podcast and videos from his website. In a new series called John Anderson Direct, John stays safe and continues to talk to high profile leaders on today’s issues — direct from home.
Note: The political views expressed by our valued guests are their own and their appearance on the show does not necessarily imply any endorsement of theirs or any entity they represent.
Interview Transcript
Grace: John, I’m very curious to pick your brain on what you feel about war, and how your personal experience may have impacted you to think the way you think about it.
John: War is a terrible brutalizer, and the effects of a major war can carry forward for many generations. It can shape societies and have a negative impact I think for many, many years. We’ve been born when our parents were quite old because their lives were interrupted by the Second World War. It delayed my mother and father getting married for many years because dad was very, very badly wounded.
Grace: How old was your father when he met your mom and had kids?
John: Well, he actually met my mother when they were in their last years at school, so when he was about 17 or 18 and everyone assumed they’d eventually get married. But then the war came, dad said he wouldn’t marry her for fear that he might get killed, and he almost did. By the time they finally married, there were both well into their 30’s which was old in those days.
Grace: What kind of injury did he have?
John: It was a shrapnel injury, very, very bad ones. He wasn’t expected to live when his friends found him — at the end of the second day of the Battle of El Alamein, which was the first major battle that the Allies actually managed to stop the Germans in. It was one of the World War II battles that Australians played a critical role in. It was the point at which Churchill said, “Well this is the end of the beginning perhaps.” It was the first the Germans got a big setback.
But my father was manning or leading three anti-tank guns. The Germans found the range, shrapnel started exploding all around them. My father was only about 24. A young man panicked jumped up out of the trenches was exposed. My father went up to pull him back down and was massively injured. His friends found him and off in the hospital tent.
That night, he was in a coma the doctor said he won’t see the night out, but he did. He eventually recovered. He paid a terrible price for war. It’s given me an abhorrence of human conflict. It’s also given me a firm conviction though that human conflict is something we will never see the end of. The old Chinese proverb is right, “If you seek peace, prepare for war.”
Grace: Growing up on the farm, it was you, your dad because your mom passed away when you were three years old. What was your view about life or death growing up especially without a mom?
John: I don’t know how much a young person can comprehend death. When you’re young, you think it’s never going to happen. It’s probably not until you’re mid 30’s. I know for me, my father died when I was 35. I remember driving to a hospital one night, thinking to myself: “Well, there’s three scores and 10, that’s 70 years,” and it struck me that life is actually incredibly short.
I think that happens to men at about age 35 to 40. They suddenly realize that if you think back 35 years, you can remember when you were a little kid, you think forward 35 years and you’re going to be seriously old. Life doesn’t last long. I’m not sure as a kid, even losing my mother deeply conscious as I was of her not being there. We do long. We ought to remember this, we do actually long to know our mother and our father. It’s part of the way that we’re wired I believe. I certainly missed her and wanted to know more of her, and was always fascinated when people spoke about her, but I don’t know that I had a deep sense of, if you like, my own mortality rising out of it.
Grace: When you were a member of the National Cabinet back in 1996 till about 2005, you shared about how for years you worked on cutting debt in Australia, how it wasn’t easy at first as a reformist government. What happened after, and how can that relate to what’s happening in our world today?
John: In Australia, what happened was that the fruit arrived, employment started to rise strongly, and wages, real wages started to rise strongly. It particularly, for a few years, gave young people a tremendous set of opportunities as they came out of schools, and went to universities, and went into the job market.
The entire nation started to see the value of it, that shifted the way Australians saw things, but now we’re going to go through it all again. Because the truth is, we had the ’07, ’08 debt crisis. Started by, the trigger was Lehman Brothers failing, but you’ve got to see that as a lens for seeing what happened, that frightful economic collapse.
The public sector took a whole lot of debt on from the private sector which means the taxpayers now have big debts. We solved the debt crisis with more debt and then we’ve had COVID-19 catching us at a time when we were still deeply in debt. Not having done the hard reform to fix our economies properly, and that applies to America as well.
It’s been growing very strongly, and people have been enjoying the jobs and the bread of prosperity until COVID-19 came. What has been really worrying me as an admirer of America is the way in which the public sector debt is growing, growing, growing. Which means particularly, if interest rates ever go up, tomorrow’s taxpayers will be absolutely hit hard.
There’s no way around it. That’s to my way of thinking, the dishonesty of some of the popular “solutions” that have been bandied around that appeal superficially to young people, but actually to take Britain for example. When I was a young man, Britain had been spending too much money. It had tried the very things that are being promoted again now by some people in Britain.
The very things, all same things, history doesn’t necessarily repeat exactly, but it rhymes, and Britain ended up basically broke. One of the wealthiest countries in the world have to go cap in hand at the International Monetary Fund to get a bailout, and then a very strong leader came along and forced through reforms, tightened up spending, got the country going again. But these things, we need to learn the lessons of history.
Grace: So are you saying countries are in a lot of debt, and it’s becoming a big problem?
John: Most Western countries are chronically in debt. I actually see it as a real fault line lining up in Western society now. People with assets, which is mostly older people, become wealthier and wealthier. People who are trying to get assets, whether it’s their first home or some savings, young people find it harder and harder. It’s a very nasty and unfortunate gap.
I actually do feel very sorry for young people. There’s a bit of research around saying that they know it will be tougher for them, and that they’re prepared to take that on. But I have to say that I hear some of the policy promises being made. Well, let’s spell it out by Mr. Corbyn in Britain, and Mr. Sanders in America, appealing to young people by saying, “We’ll cancel all your college debts and settle.”
Without explaining what all that means is that when they do work, they’ll have to pay back even more debt in their taxes. You know, there’s no such thing.
Grace: As a free lunch.
John: No, there’s not. Those are, those are socialist answers. Or if you had been taught of properly at school, you’d recognize that those are actually non-answers. They just land you in more trouble.
Grace: Now, with COVID-19 happening right before us, what do you think is going to happen with our country or with the world?
John: I think it’s incredibly hard to know, because we don’t know as you and I speak now, how long it’s going to go on for, and how bad the health crisis will be, and how bad the economic mayhem that will result will be. But it’s likely to be extremely serious, and there will be a dreadful hangover, particularly a debt and very high levels of unemployment. So it will be government sector debt, probably corporate debt, business debt, and possibly personal debt. Although a lot of people who are still able to draw an income won’t be spending much because they’re not traveling, they’re not dining out.
But there will be a furious debate between those who say, “Right, let’s keep big government interfering, free enterprise has had its day.” Lots of young people have now have lost confidence in capitalism. The only thing I can say to them is you cannot name– I honestly cannot name another system that has really delivered for all people. Lifted people out of poverty, and given them opportunities. People might say, well what about the command economy out of Beijing, but in fact, China only started to move forward when they allowed a fair degree of capitalism.
Grace: They opened their doors.
John: That’s right.
Grace: They opened their doors to the rest of the world.
John: They let people to make a profit. People won’t work hard if they think it’s going to be taken away from them. They won’t do it. They say, “What’s the point? It will all come unwound.” The history teaches you that very clearly. The system has never been broken because human nature has never been changed.
Grace: What do you think politicians are thinking right now at this moment regarding COVID-19?
John: I think in some ways, in many countries– I think in my country Australia, in some ways, the politicians have behaved better than some of the people have. There will be those who say, “How can you possibly say that, John?” We’ve seen people behaving in some cases very, very irresponsibly, and I think government has been leading quite well in the face of a very– It’s like grappling the smoke and it gets worse every day. I would imagine that they are extremely worried. They’re very worried.
No leader wants to be in command when everything goes to custom, and one false move, or even if it’s just perceived to be the wrong move that brings the economy down, or cost all section of the economy their jobs. It’s a dreadful prospect. And I think they really are worthy of our respect and our praise whenever you can sense that they’re honestly trying to do the right thing at the moment. At the end of this, we are going to have the mother of all debates, about how we move on.
Whether it’s going to be some new monetary theory ideas, there’s nothing new about them at all. They’ve all been tried, they’ve always failed, but whether we’re going to go through the hard discipline that we refused to go through after ’07, ’08. So we’ve got to wind this public sector debt back, the only way we will restore prosperity. It’s the only way we’ll be ready for the next shock, because there’ll be another one. There always is. We should have learnt the lesson in ’07, ’08, we didn’t. We’ll have to learn it out of this. It’s not going to be easy, and I suspect most of us are going to have to lower our sights a little in terms of living standards.
Grace: Trump just wrote, or his administration just projected this would create $2 trillion in debt for the nation. Given that we already have debt and this will create that much more debt, where do you think this would go?
John: I don’t know. It worries me a lot. It keeps me awake because I’m a father and a grandfather. I don’t know how we’re going to resolve it because we’ve never seen indebtedness of this sort. Nor have we seen interest rates at such a low level for such a long time. These are uncharted waters. In the end, we have to remember, debt is debt is debt. Even if they are your fellow countrymen, you can’t default on debt, and hope to keep the economy working. It won’t happen. You got to somehow manage those debts, and start to wind them back, and it’s a long grind just as it is for a household that gets in too deep. A nation can hardly declare bankrupt. If it does, there’s no one there to bail it out.
Grace: How do you feel a leader with a Christian faith should be leading the country right now?
John: Prayerfully. I do think our pride has a lot to do with the problems that we face. I think a leader ideally should project great humility. We have little to boast about. We actually have let ourselves and our children and grandchildren down in the West. I genuinely believe that. At some stage we decided pride was a greater virtue than humility and modesty, and other person’s centeredness. It’s now all about me. The results I think are disastrous. We’re going to have to rethink very carefully.
Now, we need leaders who will model that. Australia is led by a man at the moment who I think essentially understands he must serve. He’s not there to be served. In an age, when unfortunately, government has become for too many people a substitute for God, there’s a terrible price to be paid if you don’t get it right.
Now, it’s obviously very important to get it right. But it’s also important for people in the community for those to realize, that in a democracy particularly, it’s vitally significant to never forget that politicians are humans too. They won’t always get it right, even with the best will in the world. If you just assume that they’re always acting out of self-interest, they’re always self-serving, they’re always selfish, they’ll become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have to be prepared to reward and encourage men and women in public life who are earnest and sincere and well-motivated.
If we’re not going to recognize that, they won’t come forward. An up-and-coming young politician who I admire greatly in Australia, say to me recently, “I’ve watched how they done the Prime Minister over during the summer,” because he had a very bad summer and the media were after him in this country. “It’s so discouraged me. I’m not sure I want to continue in public office.” And I said to him, “I understand how you feel, but if people like you feel so discouraged, we really are in deep trouble.”
Grace: No one wants to be in that position because you’ll be judged by everyone.
John: This is our problem. We’ve become so judgmental. We so automatically assume we know best, and our concern has become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Grace: John, I see your strong position in democracy. You were the leader of a democratic nation. What’s interesting is you seem to understand both how painful it can be to lead a nation that can be quite opinionated and difficult. Like you said, “now turbocharged by social media.” At the same time, you do believe in the beauty of the system to advance society, to be for the people and by the people. I think a lot of people struggle with where democracy is today, because it seems to be what’s dividing our country, at least in America in recent years. How do you think this issue can be addressed?
John: Truth is that every Western society now is becoming incredibly tribalized, and this is now one of the greatest threats to our going forward. We are so focused on the things that divide us, and so reluctant to identify with our fellow countrymen that it’s very, very hard for us to agree on the way forward, or for leaders to find us a way forward.
I worked very hard at where this rural city divide in Australia has become a real problem. People who live outside the big cities felt like second class citizens. There’s a parallel in the United States today, of course. A very close one. I found it very hard to understand what were legitimate grievances as opposed to grievances that weren’t the fault of government, and to address them. But when there are inequalities, for example in health delivery services, or in mobile phone services, or maths and science in school, things like that, work very, very hard to try and give country people the tools they needed to ensure that they didn’t see themselves as neglected and second-class citizens who weren’t respected or appreciated.
Grace: Is it fair to say, you represented a marginal group in Australia. When you came in, you had to understand what everyone wanted, and so you created something that would work for everyone, versus someone who would only understand the majority view and forget about everyone else?
John: I do say that people look– If you just want politicians to represent your particular interests, you may be asking them to do it at the expense of the population at large. That’s not the right way to do it. A good government in the interest of all Americans or all Australians on the things that they have in common. You want to be safe in your bed at night. You want to be strategically safe. You want a strong economy. You want job opportunities. Reasonable incomes. Get those things right, and off the back of strong governance, you can then meet the needs of disadvantaged groups. Unfortunately, what happens with people in every tribalized group you can think of insists that their needs be met regardless of the implications for the interest of the whole, as though they are not part of the whole in the first place.
That is the nature of what we now call identity politics. So if you go back to Martin Luther King, “I have a dream that one day my children will be judged according to the content of their character, not the color of their skin.” And then you think of Kennedy saying, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Both of those are appeals for us to think of the common will, the common good, and to think of yourselves as fully members of, in that case, the American family.
Now what we do is we turn that on its head. We say, I have grievances. I and people like me have been unfairly treated, therefore I identify with a grievance group, with a victimhood group. I demand that my country, which means my fellow countrymen, must meet my needs. That is not to say people don’t have legitimate needs, they do, but to the greatest degree possible we should ask ourselves, “How do we include everybody in the family rather than create one main group, the Left in Australia called, recently, an aristocracy of victimhood.” There are people with real needs, no one disputes that. What we actually want everybody to do is to feel that they are part of the family. We don’t want to create some sort of new uneven society. Martin Luther King would roll in his grave, I think, at the way in which now you have to elevate somebody’s status on the basis of the color of their skin rather than simply, as he pled, recognize them as fully part of the family.