Transcript

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: And joining me now from Canberra is Australia's former prime minister, Kevin Rudd. Thanks for joining us, Mr Rudd.

KEVIN RUDD, FORMER PRIME MINISTER: Good to be with you and good to be back in Oz.

LEIGH SALES: You are a recovering politician, so let me ask you to explain something. We've got everyone from the Business Council to the ACTU, to the Conservation Foundation, to St Vincent's de Paul saying we need a cohesive national energy policy and we need it yesterday.

If groups that diverse can come together, then why can't politicians cooperate in the national interest to get something done?

KEVIN RUDD: I suppose because this cocktail of climate change action on the one hand and national energy security have been essentially polarised, or bifurcated in the national political debate for far too long.

LEIGH SALES: So, what's it going to take to break that?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, the truth is, if we applied approach of evidence-based policy, actions in both domains are possible. These are not mutually irreconcilable tensions, if you like, or objectives in national policy. I think there's four or five practical things you could look at.

One is to provide certainty for markets in the future, energy markets, you do need a carbon price, point one. Otherwise, you have the market constantly guessing as to what the policy parameters are. That's why we've tried, unsuccessfully, as the Australian government, when I was in office, to bring in an emissions trading scheme.

Two, in addition to a carbon price, as a number of the people who you've just heard on the broadcast have indicated, we need to unleash domestic gas onto the domestic market. Australia is about to become, I think, the second-largest supplier of natural gas, LNG form, to the rest of the world. I think it's high time we actually provided this coal alternative to the domestic energy supply.

I think number three is, despite what Malcolm Turnbull has been going on about today and previous days, clean coal, so-called, is not going to provide an effective substitute for gas in terms of long-term energy supply. When I was in office, we established the carbon capture and storage institute, about five or six years ago, to look at carbon sequestration and the range of four or five known technologies to do this effectively. They're still nowhere near critical mass.

Two final points, 'cause you've asked how does all this all come together.

LEIGH SALES: Briefly, if you could, 'cause I want to get to some other things.

KEVIN RUDD: Yeah, sure, sure. Is the question of the role of the national electricity regulator. I think a deep, evidence-based factual inquiry needs to occur as to what happened with AEMO in this most recent crises. Has there been gaming of the system by some of the large generators? Unknown.

But the rules need to be such that you've got market transparency and the ability of the regulator to intervene with sufficient redundancy in the market, nationally and within states, to fill the gap. Put these together with renewables, then I think you've got the basis for a sustainable energy policy, while not being a climate change vandal.

LEIGH SALES: If we could go back to 2010, would you now take your emissions trading scheme to a double dissolution, rather than delaying it? Because that is seen as a pivotal moment in Australia's difficulty in having an energy policy going forwards.

KEVIN RUDD: Well, let's be very clear about it. Number one, we tried to legislate for an emissions trading scheme twice - rejected by this Coalition government - including many of the people who are still in it.

And secondly, we then brought in a fixed carbon price which I campaigned on in the 2013 election to retain. It was already in operation prior to that. And in that election campaign, Tony Abbott, the then-Leader of the Opposition, said, "Elect us and we're going to repeal the carbon price". So we had a carbon price in operation by 2012, which this mob, through their political opportunism, got rid of. So the carbon price could have been set.

LEIGH SALES: Alright, if we can turn to another subject - tomorrow the Federal Government will release the ninth Closing The Gap report, which publicises data on Indigenous disadvantage. You're the one who introduced that annual public report. Why do you think over those nine years progress has been so patchy?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, firstly, I'm glad that we brought it in, because it's supposed to be an annual national accounting for progress and regress in the seven targets we set for reducing disadvantage.

I think, secondly, you've had progress in a number of those categories, but obviously others have just been not up to scratch. The key thing is to ensure you've still got effective national political leadership from a Prime Minister who cares about it, cares about it enough to knock together the heads of the states, where a lot of the policy action lies. Ripping half a billion dollars out of the funding of Indigenous services doesn't help either.

LEIGH SALES: We'll get the new data tomorrow which will have the latest figures, but based on the ones that we've seen up until now, which area of Indigenous disadvantage has alarmed you the most?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, there's one that's not quite captured in the targets, but let me go to two related aspects of the answer to your question. One's Indigenous incarceration rates, because frankly that starts to blow everything else out, and that's going through the roof.

The other is something I've been speaking about today in my own annual address on the anniversary of the Apology Statement, and that is the ballooning rate of the removal of Aboriginal and Islander children from their homes, but not using the proper mechanisms to try and place those kids into other clan and family and/or cultural environments where they maintain their Aboriginality.

LEIGH SALES: And what do you think is the potential end result of that?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, I worry about a second Stolen Generation emerging. The figures are this. When I first was elected, there was about 7,000 Indigenous kids at that stage who had been removed from their families. That's now running at 15,000.

But the critical thing is about a third, or a slightly more than a third of those number, the relevant state and territory authorities are not even testing whether you can place those kids in wider family groups or in clan groups or in other cultural environments. So they're ending up with non-Aboriginal foster parents and often churning through them at a rate of knots. Bad for the kids, bad for their cultural connection, but also bad for their sense of security.

LEIGH SALES: When the whole community mobilises behind something, that's when you often see change, and we haven't seen enough change in this area, which does raise the question, do Australians care enough about this issue?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, I think if we reflect back honestly to the nature of the public response to the Apology back in 2008, frankly, you could have knocked me over with a feather then that Australians then cared.

I thought I was going to deliver a speech then which everyone would have gone, "M'yah", and then just walked past. They didn't. They did care. And so, in the nine years since then, you've seen a whole lot of action. The expansion of the number of groups in communities, the number of Aboriginal kids now being placed in first-class schools across the country.

But it doesn't happen, Leigh, unless you've got a Prime Minister who really cares, who will stick it at the top of the agenda and I would call upon Mr Turnbull in his statement tomorrow to put this, again, at the top of the prime ministerial agenda, otherwise people do fall away.

LEIGH SALES: Before we let you go, that hostile phone call between the US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull - how can Australia deal with a president who is so undiplomatic and erratic?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, to be fair to Mr Turnbull, it was a tough old time, but the bottom line is he's not Robinson Crusoe either. Remember, I was dealing with George Bush at a time when I was about to say, "George, terrific, we're about to pull Australian forces out of Iraq and I think your war stinks." So there are always...

LEIGH SALES: But George Bush is not like Donald Trump.

KEVIN RUDD: Well, let me tell you, there were some harsh things said privately there too. But the bottom line is this - I think that civility needs to return to the public discussion and I would hope and frankly ask that President Trump restores civility in his communications with a country which, after all, is one of America's two closest allies in the world.

LEIGH SALES: Kevin Rudd, thank you very much for your time this evening.

KEVIN RUDD: Good to be with you.