Sussan Ley's 'I'm not Dutton' speech

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Hey there, I'm Erin Park, and my new podcast, Expanse, Nowhere Man, is about why in 1999 a young American wandered into one of Australia's most deadly landscapes, alone with barely any water, on purpose.

Spanning three decades and two continents, this story took me places I never imagined.

Stick around at the end of this episode of Politics Now to hear a taste of what I've got for you.

The ceasefire Donald Trump claims to have brokered less than 24 hours ago is already on pretty shaky ground and the US President is not happy.

It comes as over 100 Australians have managed to board repatriation flights from Tel Aviv after a nail-biting wait to come home.

At the same time, Opposition leader Susan Lee has addressed the National Press Club, a space her predecessor did not like to frequent.

She's admitted her party was smashed in the recent election and laid the groundwork for a path forward.

Welcome to Politics Now.

Hi, I'm Patricia Carvellis.

And I'm David Spears.

And David, what a week in global affairs.

As quickly as Donald Trump declared a ceasefire had been brokered between Israel and Iran, it already looked to have been violated within just hours of its announcement.

And Donald Trump's intervention after that, I'm still reeling from.

I watched that clip of him on his way to NATO maybe 25 times where he dropped the F-bomb, which I'm also still recovering from.

But it just the way this week played out was extraordinary.

Yeah, look, no, we don't typically hear U.S.

presidents speak like that.

It speaks to his frustration, right?

And this is genuine.

The guy is absolutely furious that this ceasefire, that clearly for him, you know, is the next step to the Nobel Peace Prize.

I mean, this is such a great achievement.

He's on his way to NATO where he's going to be hailed this amazing ability to bring peace to the Middle East, right?

That we haven't seen in our lives.

12-day war.

12-day war, but dropping these bombs, which is always contentious, a difficult decision, has seemingly worked, and Iran's come to the table, and that this could be undone within hours.

What an embarrassment.

Yes, he was cursing about this.

We also read that he was on the phone to Benjamin Netanyahu while those Israeli planes were in the air, in Iran's airspace, saying, do not drop those, you know, don't go ahead with any strikes against Iran.

And Netanyahu backed off, which tells us a bit about that relationship now as well.

But that frustration from Donald Trump, I think, was very real.

Right now, this ceasefire, you know, as we record this, does appear to be holding, but we need to be, you know, I guess, realistic about how shaky this is.

The fundamentals remain.

There's a regime in Iran.

Yes, it's been badly weakened, but it still wants to see Israel gone, and it still wants to have a nuclear program of some sort, a peaceful program, it says.

But this is a red line for Israel.

It doesn't want Iran to have any sort of nuclear program.

We can get to what's left of this nuclear program, what damage was done to those nuclear stocks.

But these are the fundamentals that remain.

So, you know, sure, there's a ceasefire hanging in there at the moment, but how long will it last?

We just don't know.

It's pretty shaky.

At the same time, there's been a report by both CNN and the New York Times claiming that those US strikes, those bunker-busting bombs that were used, only set back the nuclear program by months, so no obliteration.

That's despite Trump's claims that he did obliterate the nuclear facilities.

He has come out in his own post now, you know, attacking the media.

I mean, that's pretty standard for Trump.

He would not like the narrative that the thing he did didn't work.

But it does raise really significant questions about where that leaves that program,

what a deal would look like, what are the ramifications of their involvement.

I mean, the first time the bunker busting bombs were used, so he did do something that was unprecedented.

Yeah, here's the thing.

I mean, so this leak is also embarrassing and damaging for Trump, right?

And yes, the reactions, as you say, is is quite predictable, attacking the nation.

Yep, it's flat out wrong, said his White House press secretary, Carolyn Levitt, who I think also said it was a low-level loser who would have leaked this.

But anyway.

I don't know how low-level the loser was.

Sounds like a high-level loser.

But this is from the Defense Intelligence Agency.

So we're talking about within the Pentagon.

which was responsible for this mission.

This report, apparently, according to the New York Times and CNN, does, as you say, suggest that they've only set back Iran's program by a few months.

Now, we don't know what further intelligence they're looking at.

We've seen those satellite images, which seem pretty inconclusive.

You can see damage done on the surface, but who knows what's left down below.

Who knows what happened to the enriched uranium, these 400-odd kilograms of 60% enriched uranium that Iran has hinted it moved before the strikes.

Who knows where that is?

Maybe the Israelis have some idea, but look, we don't know.

I also was reading this morning about this pickaxe mountain site that I'll admit I hadn't heard about before, that is yet another deep, deep, deep underground site bigger and deeper than the Ford O facility that was struck.

So look, who knows?

We do know from the Iranian regime they do want to continue with some sort of nuclear program, but exactly what they've got, what's going on behind the scenes, whether they'll stay in the non-proliferation treaty, all of these are unknowns right now.

Yeah, there's so much unknown.

So we will keep bringing you updates every day as we can on this.

It all comes, though, as Donald Trump arrives in the Netherlands for the NATO Defence Summit.

A kind of red carpet rolled out for him.

He's obviously quite a key player.

Keeping the US in NATO when he's made veiled threats in the past about what that might look like has been,

it's fair to say, something that's made Europe nervous.

He's been upgraded to stay with the King and Queen and the palace at The Hague.

It's all very smart Trump politics, making him feel very special, which we know to work.

And then he leaked a text, which I thought was, okay, so if I send you a text, David, and I do send you texts,

I just want to be clear, like, you're never going to screenshot my text and then share it.

Not that there's anything embarrassing in there, but no, no, no, no.

Usually great interview, David.

How you going?

Okay.

Okay, but you never know.

Like, people sometimes share some views in texts.

Be careful, though, if you send them.

to Donald Trump, especially if you're the NATO judge.

That's good advice.

Who congratulated his decisive action on the strikes and promising Europe would pay big.

The thing about this text is it is so clearly written in a way as to really kind of suck up to Trump and make him feel very good.

And he writes it thinking it would be kept private.

Then Trump shares it because

he wants the praise to be seen by all.

And then we did say it all.

Mark Rutter, the Secretary General of NATO, has done a few things really to keep Trump at the NATO table, right?

Because Because there's been this big question, Mark, you know, lingering from his first term in office.

Is he really wedded to this thing?

He keeps bagging it.

Is he really going to stick with the Article 5?

You know, an attack on one is an attack on all.

I mean, Trump keeps saying things like, what did he say overnight?

Well, it depends on your definition of Article 5.

So what's Mark Rutter doing?

The text, you know, wonderful.

You know, how great was this strike on Iran?

You'll come here as a hero.

Best strike ever.

He's condensed the

communique that they're likely to produce to just a five-paragraph, one-par thing, which is the sort of thing Trump likes.

He's condensed the

face time that Trump is going to be required because we know he doesn't like international summits to

one day or less than one day.

So he's doing everything he can.

The big thing.

The big thing is getting the members of NATO to agree to this 5% of GDP target to spend on national security.

3.5% on defense, 1.5% on other related infrastructure and cybersecurity and so on.

The Spanish are the ones, I think, who are still holding out.

We'll see where that goes tonight, our time.

But I think most of the rest of NATO, you know, yes, it's over 10 years, so it's over a long period of time, but this is still a big lift, a big step up for those NATO members to lift their defence spending.

And Mark Rutter is the one who's really driven that, and why has he driven that?

Well, partly to keep Trump satisfied, partly because of Russia, clearly, as well, and what it's doing in Ukraine.

It's very real for Europeans right now.

Funny thing is, who's the one who's closest to Vladimir Putin?

Donald Trump, probably out of all those NATO members.

Trump has been delivering the truth bombs in the last day or so.

You can see why he cuts through with many people and does have a base of popularity.

You know, firstly, calling out Israel as he did and Iran for their fighting.

People love that, I reckon, in these days.

They do.

Because and beyond, because he cuts through the sort of political speak and just sort of says what he really thinks.

Now, of course, that could come out very badly, and it often does.

Back to the NATO broader issue.

It's really interesting if we can just kind of put Australia in the the frame here.

Our Prime Minister's not there.

Okay, he didn't go.

He's been under some questioning around why he didn't from the opposition.

I'm actually going to be speaking to Tony Abbott on afternoon briefing later today.

And I know he's been concerned about, well, why aren't we involved in these kind of, you know, why isn't the Prime Minister stepping up?

And this critique is sort of following around the Prime Minister at the moment.

Why not?

One of Abbott's arguments is it's around spending.

It's around defence spending and not wanting us to be, that the Prime Minister doesn't want to be in the space where he's being pushed on defence spending.

Do you think there's any truth to that, though?

Because that seems to be a really strong emerging theme.

Yeah, look, for the Prime Minister, I think there are arguments why he should have gone, there are arguments why maybe not.

Look, but on the defence, Richard Maltes is there, the Defence Minister and Deputy PM.

I think on defence spending, this is clearly an awkward issue for Australia in that setting, where you've got most of them, maybe all of them, agreeing to get to 5% or 3.5% of defence plus 1.5%

of other national security-related infrastructure, it's far more than what we're doing.

And Anthony Albanese's view is these sort of GDP targets aren't the way to go.

He argues you're better off identifying what you need and not setting some arbitrary target and putting a bucket of money out there for who knows what.

So he fundamentally disagrees with the approach, let alone the level.

The level we're at, to remind people, I'm sure everyone's up to speed now on how much we're spending on defence, it's currently 2%.

It's going to get to 2.3% of GDP in about eight years' time.

So even then, we're going to be well short of these sort of of NATO levels.

So, yeah, that is an awkward issue for Australia.

So awkward for Australia.

So, the Prime Minister made that judgment not to go, but this kind of this is a pretty key meeting, I think.

It does put him in a position, though, where at some point he will have to deal with this ongoing issue around spending.

Just on that, I just think part of his thinking, I understand, was, yes, there were good reasons to go because you'd get another sit-down with all these European leaders,

no doubt about it.

And I think would have done a side trip to London with Kirsten, meet Kirstama individually there.

But the narrative would have been, Are you going to get a meeting with Trump?

Are you going to get a meeting with Trump?

Why didn't you get a meeting with Trump?

And that would have just overshadowed everything.

And that's probably a fair point.

Oh, 100%.

And it becomes the overwhelming point.

It sort of dominates everything.

But I think the broader thing where the Prime Minister is being quite selective about the way that he enters these international

debates has been a bit of a theme of the week.

And more more broadly, he doesn't seem overly worried about the critiques about the way that he operates in that theater, but they do at some point have to resolve some of these questions because they're lingering.

Yeah, and he's got to get a meeting with Trump.

That's the bottom of mine, right?

I mean, you know, it doesn't have to be tomorrow, it doesn't have to be next week, but, you know, the clock is ticking on this.

You can sort of feel that the relationship is not what it should be between the two leaders.

Maybe he gets a meeting in the White House.

You know, there's talk around doing that in September because he's planning on going to the New York UN General Assembly and addressing that for the first time.

So maybe he gets a side trip there, but maybe it's earlier than that.

Maybe he does get a one-on-one in the White House with Trump before then, and I reckon he would jump on the plane and do that for sure if that opening is there.

For sure.

Let's go back to our domestic politics and talk about what was, I think, a significant first big speech, keynote speech, from Susan Lee at the National Press Club.

Now I mentioned at the start that

it sends a signal that she even turns up there because her predecessor Peter Dutton didn't, refused to.

It annoyed all of the press gallery.

It was a big issue.

It also sent a signal, I suppose, that he didn't take Canberra seriously or the press gallery seriously, that he wanted to kind of communicate with voters without having to deal with the press gallery.

So by speaking speaking even there, I know I'm making a big deal about it, but even by speaking there, by making that decision, she's sending signal after signal, including the women's podcast she's going on, the kind of theme she's talking about, that she's the anti-Peter Dutton candidate.

Don't you think?

It's funny you say that.

It's funny you say that.

That's exactly what I was going to say.

We both just watched this.

We're recording this

minutes after she's going to be a little bit more.

Yeah, no, but this to me was the I am not Peter Dutton speech.

Oh, that was going to be my column.

Are you going to write that first?

No, well,

we haven't canvassed this.

I must tell with listeners.

But here's what I thought.

So yes, she turned up, right?

I'm not Peter Dutton.

I'm turning up at the press club, and this won't be the last time I'll be back here.

What were her first words?

An acknowledgement of traditional owners.

Now, you know, that might be common in a lot of speeches, but for Peter Dutton, remember he made this thing before the election about, oh, these things are overdone.

There she was, saying it very clearly.

I respect the media and the role you play in democracy.

I mean, Dutton would never say stuff like that.

She spoke, she said she had a deep and abiding respect for the public service.

PK,

this is the I am not Peter Dutton.

I sat there for a while scratching my head thinking, was Susan Lee really deputy leader to Peter Dutton?

It's just hard to...

Living rent-free in my brain.

This is what I was thinking too.

I was like, this is a very blatant attempt at saying, I'm not Peter Dutton.

I'm going to do this really differently.

And I want you to know it and write it this way.

Yeah, and look, she went through, we got smashed, we got totally smashed.

We hold just two of the 43 inner metro seats, seven of the 45 outer metro seats.

These numbers, she said, reflect a deep and growing disconnect.

Now, she didn't mention Peter Dutton by name, but I think in everything she did there today, this was about saying, you know, we were completely on the wrong track.

I am putting us on a very different track from here.

Now, we'll see where that goes.

I think when it comes to the detail of what she's going to do, all we got was sort of generalities.

But there were some really important things she did talk about.

Women was a big one.

Pre-selecting more women in winnable seats, opening up the idea of quotas.

If state divisions choose to do this, and it's up to each state division in the Liberal Party, that's how it works, that's fine, she said.

If others don't, that's fine as well.

But I think that's a...

That's an opening up from the leader of a Liberal Party that we've not heard previously.

Scott Morrison sort of, you know, toyed with the idea briefly.

But Susan Lee here today was saying she's open to quotas and if a state division does that it sounds like she'll back it she's very serious she said about getting more women in into parliament um and i just a couple other things i look she she went through the sort of shopping list of tax energy um defence relations with china uh she she her comments on family and domestic violence i thought were really interesting perhaps we can come back to that um but no mention of immigration anti-semitism these themes that for peter dutton were so consistent

didn't get a mention from Susan Lee at all as a priority.

But yeah,

I found it a really interesting speech.

And it looked at just one more thing I jotted down.

The Australian promise, she said, if you work hard, play by the rules, do your best for your kids and contribute to your community, you'll be able to build a better life for yourself and your family.

It just reminded me of Scott Morrison's, if you have a go, you get a go.

Those two are close, closer than some people might think.

But

what did you think?

I thought it was a really decent speech.

She framed it as an attempt to introduce herself to the Australian public, and there is a lot of that.

Like, she's been in public life for a really long time, but you know, if you do any basic survey of a lot of Australians, they probably struggle sometimes to even tell you who the opposition leader is.

So, you do have to do a lot of that introductory stuff.

I thought it was interesting that she is leaning so much into her own personal story.

It reminds me a little bit about

what we've heard from Anthony Abenesi with his kind of public housing story.

Hers is kind of the battler woman who, you know, just pushed.

Fascinating story.

She's got a great story to tell, right?

Like, I mean, I, even before she became leader, I remember once I was, I talk about politicians all the time to my daughters, and I was like, oh, she learned how to fly her own planes, this woman, you know, look, she's, that's, that is a good yarn, right?

Born in Nigeria, dad was a military intelligence officer, you know, talked about driving around, talking Arabic, the contractor.

She talks about in this speech, you know, taking a baby to university where she signed up.

I mean, that that will resonate with lots of women.

Like that is, you know, you've got, I've had to take a baby in as I record a podcast.

You know, like these are the things that women know.

And so I think it's very relatable.

So that's the first thing.

Now on the serious stuff, gender, on gender and women's representation in the Liberal Party in pre-selection.

I thought this was interesting and this might trip her up a little.

She wants to get more women pre-selected into winnable seats.

Does she have a strategy for that?

Well, her strategy is that she's more passionate about it than previous leaders.

So wouldn't sign up to quotas, wouldn't sign up to any formalised way other than trust me, I'm a woman and I care more than my predecessors.

She's leaning into quotas though, don't you think, a bit more than her predecessors.

The way that party works, it's going to take a lot of pushing to get them there.

And this was a bit of a push, I thought.

I think that's probably right, but there was nothing tangible that came out of it saying, I don't think there was an announcement of a way to do it.

No, she said if the state divisions, it's up to them, but if they want to go down the path of quotas, that's fine.

If some state divisions choose to implement quotas, that's fine.

If others don't, that's also fine.

So it was kind of a

better way, yes, but I think having a leader say, I'm fine with quotas, over to you, to the organisational wing of the party, is a step.

It is a step.

I think you're right that it's a step.

It's going to be hard for her to get this across.

And I think she was sending the message not to be overly critical at all, but to be fair and balanced about it, that she's going to invest a lot of her own personal leadership and her teeth into this and that she's not going to die wondering.

What did you think of the comments on domestic and family violence?

I mean, I'm a little loath to, you know, go to any politician's personal experience on something like that, but she put it out there in the speech.

you know, saying that she resonated with women who've had experiences and listed a few experiences.

This resonated with her.

Phil Curry did somewhat delicately ask a follow-up question about what she was suggesting here, and I don't think she offered much more,

but was that significant in your view?

It is significant.

She was certainly suggesting that she was, you know, she'd experienced some sort of oppressive behaviour.

We don't know the details.

Coercive control.

And I think it would be very much...

an experience that many women have experienced.

The statistics tell that story, David, whether it's coercive or physical violence.

There is obviously a spectrum of violence, but it's all unacceptable.

And so many women would be probably nodding along if that gets reported.

I think it's a sort of powerful message to send, but she didn't obviously want to go into detail.

And that's, you know, fine, I think.

I mean, you know, everyone has to go through every detail of their trauma.

But to say that you've experienced something and then you understand, and that means that you take that into your policymaking.

It's that whole thing about whether lived experience can be meaningful.

Well, it's not the only thing, but it's part of the story for policymaking.

That's why why we now, if we go to another area, have

what are we on?

Like we have had so many Indigenous people in Indigenous affairs as ministers now.

Now that's become almost the first.

Do you think you'll ever see someone who's non-Indigenous ever appointed to that role?

That's a good question.

No, I've been thinking about it for some time.

So we are now.

It was such a big deal when Ken White.

So the Liberals have some things that they can be proud of, right?

Oh, yeah.

They distanced themselves from some of that.

And now she's clearly re-leaning into some of it.

Yeah, I thought it was interesting that she put it in the speech and gave a shout out to Karen Little, who's now the shadow minister for the Libs in that role.

Left open a question on whether she'll turn up at the Garma Festival in August.

So, yeah, she said, I haven't checked the diary yet for that far ahead.

So she kept options open on so many things, though, right?

Whether it was tax, net zero.

Net zero.

That's where I want to go.

So she's announced something, the coalition to establish a working group on energy and emissions reduction.

Okay, let's look at some of the names.

Dan Tiern, well, he's the guy responsible for the portfolio as the shadow minister makes sense.

Ted O'Brien, yep, shadow treasurer, used to be in the portfolio, makes sense.

Susan MacDonald and resources, Alex Hawke, Angie Bell, more of a moderate, Dean Smith, sort of

Andrew Willocks.

I don't know.

Where are they going to land on that?

Fascinating.

Who's missing from that list?

Any of those voices in the coalition who are adamant that net zero has to go?

You know, there's no Matt Canavan.

I think do the Nats have their own separate process going on.

In fact, I talked to Matt Canavan about it in my many interviews I do every day and asked him because it was reported at some stage as it was emerging that he would be in charge of this working group of the Nationals.

He's not in charge of it.

He's just in the working group, which I think

that's a Nats group as opposed to the coalition group.

The groups will come together, I'm sure, at some point.

Look, the point is, this is going to be bubbling along.

We know there are polar opposite views within the coalition on this.

You can have your working groups, they can do the work.

But at some point, right, they're going to have to sit down and they're going to have to thrash this out as a full party room and say, what are we going to do?

And it's not going to be easy.

I think that's their next turning point moment where you'll see,

I'm not predicting it because I'm sort of Nostradamus.

It's just so obvious.

This will be their next moment where they will have to reckon with whether they can continue as a coalition again.

So we saw the coalition fall apart, then make up very quickly because it was all just a bit hard.

Okay.

So I think it's a pretty superficial get back together.

You know, it's papered over some of the differences, delayed, kicked down the road, the big problems.

And then when this finally gets reckoned with, how do they continue?

It might be the moment where they have to make that big decision again.

It's the good old climate wars still raging after all these years, at least within the coalition.

So much fun.

All right, David, that's it for politics now today.

Thanks for joining me.

Do you know who's on your Saturday podcast or is Mel doing it again?

Yep Mel Clark's going to be jumping in the chair for me.

In fact I can tell you it's Kylie Moore Gilbert

who spent two years locked up in Iran, is an academic in this area as well.

So you know trying to explain and explore what the sentiment is in Iran right now towards their regime and more broadly, I think that's going to be a really interesting chat.

But yes, Mel's going to be filling in on that one again.

Awesome.

And I'll be back tomorrow for the party room with Fran, looking through some of these issues and all of the new ones.

Like, who knows what will happen by tomorrow morning?

I really sometimes I miss slow news days, David.

I'm like, what did they feel like?

I can't remember that feeling.

It's like trying to remember life before children or something.

It's very hard.

Like me, you must be checking your phone even more regularly than normal, which is.

I've been falling asleep to the sounds of CNN.

Okay.

uh yeah the party room at abc.net.au fran and i will answer those questions see you david see you piggy

soaring temperatures a lack of water and sand dunes every 500 meters it's one of the most inhospitable places on earth it's august 1999 and something strange is happening in the australian outback when i got there it was just organized chaos it's one of the most extensive searches ever mounted in the great sandy desert

A well-to-do young American has dumped his belongings and walked out into the Great Sandy Desert.

A white guy from America, what hope has he got?

Go be looking for a body.

He sent a postcard to his parents in America just saying, I'm heading into the desert.

Goodbye.

Triggering a media sensation and one of the biggest searches Australia had ever seen.

Once the Americans arrived, it became a lot more bizarre.

We really need to be what we call sampra gumby, always flexible.

He insisted that people use his radio handle, gunslinger.

Are you taking the piss?

But there's one problem that no one's got an answer for.

How do you search for someone who doesn't want to be found?

I felt it was his choice to choose not to come out of the desert.

I knew he couldn't be content with living a life unless he did this.

My name is Erin Park, and I've been obsessed with this story for years.

And I'm not the only one.

Why would a fit, intelligent young man with everything to live for plunge into one of the deadliest landscapes in Australia on purpose?

It's very easy to dismiss it as crazy, but I think when you dive deeper into it, you see that it's not crazy.

It's a story spanning three decades, two continents, and some strange encounters.

I really don't know how I started off in the desert in northern Australia looking into this, and now I'm in bloody Alaska looking for a porcupine.

Every little thread was even more glittery, and sparkly, and fascinating, and quick.

And it polarized opinions the world over.

Were his actions selfish or inspired?

The backlash was pretty fierce.

And it turns out this desert where Robert Baguki went missing is keeping other secrets.

What Robert Berguki did here is just the tip of the iceberg.

We've got a lot of people missing.

It remains a mystery, you know?

At a time when so many of us feel lost, what's the most extreme thing you do to feel found?

The idea of being out here alone scares the hell out of me.

I ain't no Robert Baguki, that's for sure.

And at what cost?

Death will come, and I'll be ready for it.

This is season five of Expanse: Nowhere Man.

Find it on the ABC Listen app and all the usual places.