Interview with Gary Hardgrave, 4BC

Transcript, E&OE, proof only

Subjects: New Zealand earthquake; Libya; Responsibility to Protect; Queensland domestic politics

25 March 2011

GARY HARDGRAVE: Kevin Rudd is our Foreign Minister. He's also the local member where 4BC is based here at Cannon Hill, and he joins us.

Mr Rudd, it's almost like you're on the Women's Weekly tour - you've been [laughs] everywhere the last couple of weeks. But, gee, you've had some success in Libya, and now you're in New Zealand. What's happening there?

KEVIN RUDD: I'm in Christchurch at the moment, Gary. It's the bi-annual foreign ministers' dialogue between Australia and New Zealand.

It's a regular event, but with my New Zealand counterpart, he was quite - and rightly - determined that we should have our meeting here in Christchurch. That's a good thing, and I've just spent the last couple of hours touring what is the war zone in downtown Christchurch with so much destruction.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Of course, you saw so much of it in your own federal electorate through the January floods, and to your credit you were there, helping lift furniture out of people's homes and so forth. Is there something you can relate to as far as Christchurch is concerned?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, one of the things I said to the New Zealand media here earlier today is that if any of our cities are hit by large-scale natural disasters, very few of us are capable of handling it on our own.

Heaven forbid if we ever faced earthquakes in a city like Brisbane. There's no way you can actually cope with your own local security forces and search and rescue, and even the fantastic people in the State Emergency Service, to do everything if it's a massive large-scale disaster like we've seen in Christchurch, with nearly 200 dead; like we are seeing unfolding in Japan, with tens of thousands dead and missing.

Therefore, it really underlines the need for better international coordination of our search and rescue and counter-disaster measures.

GARY HARDGRAVE: You know, we were one of the first, if not the first, to offer help to New Zealand; they were amongst the first to offer help to us. We're just, well, a couple of hours flying time apart - it makes sense.

KEVIN RUDD: It does. And I think, for your Brisbane listeners and Queensland listeners, it's important to know that in the streets of downtown Christchurch today everyone from the New Zealand Government and everyone from the New Zealand counter-disaster management authority said, 'thank you to Queensland for the search and rescue team which came - they were fantastic, they did a first class job - and thanks also to the team from New South Wales.'

The locals here cannot speak more highly of their dedication, their professionalism and, in the midst of some pretty grim times, their good humour as well.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Can I ask if in your discussions with your counterpart in New Zealand you've had a chance to also have a closer look at what they do when it comes to disasters?

They have this long-standing earthquake fund. Unlike the flood levy that's now law in Australia, they've had this long-standing fund where amounts up to $100,000 are paid for out of this government-managed fund. And when I spoke to the minister over there in charge of that a month or so ago, it seemed to me there was something Australia could learn from it.

KEVIN RUDD: That's always possible, Gary. I think the Government's always got an open mind on how to do things better in the future in Australia. But my meetings have yet to commence with the New Zealand Foreign Minister...

GARY HARDGRAVE: Okay.

KEVIN RUDD: ...I'm sure we'll run through that and other lessons to be learned out of New Zealand as well.

The purpose also here today, though, is to thank not just the last of our search and rescue teams, who have already gone back to Australia, but today is the last day of the last Australian-sworn police officer who's been here among a team of nearly four to five hundred policemen from Queensland, New South Wales and every state of Australia who've taken on the regular policing duties of the City of Christchurch, allowing the local coppers to go and attend to the emergencies arising out of the actual earthquake itself.

So to all the coppers who might be listening, Queensland coppers listening on your program this afternoon or their families, again a job fantastically well done.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Kevin Rudd, there's been a lot said about your role in the discussions about Libya at the international level a few weeks ago.

I mean, I was amongst those who questioned whether or not you were pushing the envelope a bit and having a bit of a stoush with the Prime Minister about it. But lots of people today, looking back on it, are saying you were talking some sense on Qaddafi, talked some sense on Libya.

You must be satisfied that the world has followed your way, and you've been part of some real action there.

KEVIN RUDD: Well, the first response, really, with the good folk in Libya is that no one deserves to be butchered by their own Government.

GARY HARDGRAVE: No.

KEVIN RUDD: And what was unfolding there, for those of us who remember our World War II history, was, you know, the butchery of Benghazi, possibly followed by the butchery of Tobruk, as Gaddafi rolled out his entire military hardware against a civilian population.

And look, Gary, I was just one of a number of voices around the world saying, 'let's not repeat Rwanda, let's not repeat Darfur, let's not repeat Srebrenica in the Balkans,' these mass killings which occurred within these countries.

Let's learn from history and act. And I don't underestimate the difficulty of the diplomacy, but frankly, when the Americans stepped forward, the Brits and the French, and the Chinese and the Russians elected not to veto this action in the UN Security Council, I think we can all breathe just a little more easily, because we've avoided the butchery of Benghazi so far.

Now it's a very messy military situation on the ground, but at least so far not a slaughter.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Yeah. And I guess if a precedent has been set, and some say it has been, by this, that it's about an internal driven genocide, then the big question is why not Zimbabwe? Why not put Zimbabwe on the same kind of level and act on that?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, Gary, this is what you'd describe as an evolving doctrine of international law. And the world stood back in horror and looked at how we failed to act, what happened - what was happening internally within Rwanda, despite the flare going up a number of times.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Yeah.

KEVIN RUDD: Similarly with Darfur, lying internally within the Sudan, and similarly internally within the, you know, the former Yugoslav states as well.

And so what Gareth Evans did, and full marks to him, was that in 2001 he presented a report of an international commission on the Responsibility to Protect, which he delivered with his co-chair to the United Nations. And that report was, in the main, adopted by the UN as a new basis for acting.

But this is the first cab off the rank - that is, what's happened in Libya - to apply that new doctrine of protecting civilians within countries by actions against their own governments of crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, et cetera.

Whereas, as you know, in the past the United Nations Security Council has usually only ever acted when you've got aggression between states, not aggression within states.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Yeah. Well, it seems to me an important precedent and, as you say, evolving doctrine.

I guess, Kevin Rudd, Geoffrey Archer's in Australia and maybe it's good publicity for the book he's trying to promote, but he reckons that you could become the inspiration for a character in a novel.

I don't know whether you read Geoffrey Archer, probably you do if you're anything like me in that regard. Fascinated by the Machiavellian real-life drama of how you were axed as Prime Minister. He reckons it could make a good book.

KEVIN RUDD: I'll leave Geoffrey Archer to his craft...

GARY HARDGRAVE: [Laughs]

KEVIN RUDD: ...I'm sure, Gary, as you'll stick to your craft, and I'll try and stick to my craft [laughs], which is to try and make the best of the responsibilities I have as Foreign Minister, to try and make a difference to various places around the world while still looking after your own community. And I hope you're being appropriately represented in the electorate where 4BC's studios are located.

GARY HARDGRAVE: [Laughs] We'll let you know Kevin Rudd. I tell you what...

KEVIN RUDD: [Laughs]

GARY HARDGRAVE: ...one last question. Given everything that's happened in the last 12 months, I guess in a lot of ways the remaking of your good self, do you feel a bit for John-Paul Langbroek and Lawrence Springborg this week?

KEVIN RUDD: Look, I've been head down, tail up in Canberra and I haven't followed the day by day of it all up there.

But look, I met Mr Langbroek once or twice before; he struck me as a decent sort of bloke. And Lawrence Springborg I've known, frankly, I think since I first met you, Gary - back in 1988-89, when you first entered the Parliament, which is back in the Mesolithic period of Queensland politics...

GARY HARDGRAVE: Yes, I remember we stood together a few times there, looking over that sort of Jurassic Park of a Parliament.

KEVIN RUDD: [Laughs]

GARY HARDGRAVE: [Laughs]

KEVIN RUDD: So politics can be a very tough business on the human side.

And, look, I'm not going to, you know, get sort of [inaudible] in the politics of Campbell Newman et cetera.

But I was asked about this in Canberra the other morning - no, I actually said something when I was launching or handing out an award to journalists.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Yep.

KEVIN RUDD: It's just for me a bit odd that we - that Campbell has sort of said, in effect, that he's going to be the Leader of the Opposition in absentia in hopes that he gets himself elected, in hopes he gets himself preselected, while we've got a current Leader of the Opposition who is sort of the Leader of the Opposition.

I'm just not clear what the historical precedent for this sort of thing is and, personally, I think there's probably a cleaner way in which he could have done all of this, if that's what he wanted to do. That's just my view.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Yeah. It's going to be interesting to watch, and I guess we'll both be fascinated by it, whether it's Jurassic Park revisited or what we'll find out in coming weeks.

Kevin Rudd, good to talk with you. Thank you for your time.

KEVIN RUDD: Thanks for having me on the program, Gary.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Cheers.

Kevin Rudd. He's in Christchurch, the red zone, if you like, of the earthquake, and it's good of him to call in.

END

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