Q: So Dutton’s public sector cuts and his commitment to I guess addressing a woke agenda appear to take inspiration from Trump. Should Australia be looking to the US for policy inspiration right now? And what kind of risks does it pose?

Turnbull:

As to whether Peter Dutton is taking inspiration from Donald Trump, that’s, you know, a matter for you to write about or Albanese to claim. I’m not going to buy into that. But certainly I wouldn’t be taking inspiration from Donald Trump’s policy agenda. Leaving aside all the public service cuts and the DOGE stuff and the, you know, the DEI campaign and anti-DEI campaign and, you know, the down with work from home. None of that is very popular here of course. But the big thing is protectionism. We are an open trading country. I cannot tell you the damage – Heather Smith spoke it very eloquently yesterday, an experienced economist and national security specialist. We face enormous damage potentially from a global trade war. It’s not just tariffs on our stuff that goes to America. It means there will be retaliations around the world and the trading system will close up and, you know, this is what made the Great Depression as bad as it was, America doing this in the Smoot-Hawley tariffs it wasn’t just those tariffs. It was the fact that everyone retaliated. So it’s a chain reaction.

There is ONE reason I know about the Hawley-Smoot tariffs and it is because of…anyone? Anyone?

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

I think the guy playing the teacher is an actual economist and his dad worked for the Nixon administration and he’s very conservative himself, but he ad-libbed this.