Kevin Rudd served as prime minister of Australia from 2007 through 2010 and again in 2013.
Harvard Political Review: Your government was characterized by a desire for fairness; most notably you gave an apology to the Indigenous people in 2008. How do you feel that your policies followed up upon that apology, or tried to extend more rights to the Indigenous people of Australia?
Kevin Rudd: If you look at the social justice remit of the government beyond classical national security and foreign policy, beyond macroeconomic management, which is maintaining growth during the midst of the global financial crisis, our social policy reform agenda was across education, health, housing, income payments to pensioners, aid pensioners and disability pensioners, Indigenous policy, as well as environmental sustainability. I think that across those measures there is a substantial record of achievement, but let me just go to the one you asked me about specifically, which is on Indigenous disadvantage. Rendering Australia’s first national formal apology through the Parliament to Indigenous Australians was an important part of spiritual healing within the country.
As I said in the apology speech, it was all pointless in the absence of a concrete program of action, which we call “closing the gap.” So what we did was establish six specific measures, which we announced to reduce the gap between average and non-average Australians in education, employment, and housing, and in life expectancy. We then dedicated a $5.2 billion dollar (AUD) intergovernmental agreement between the federal and state governments in Australia to bring that about, and an annual reporting mechanism to the national Parliament in progress or regress to all of the above. As of the most recent annual report to the Parliament, we have achieved progress in about three areas, we have achieved static outcome in about two areas, and we’ve achieved a slight fall back in one. Overall, progress. Measurable. Of course the first step in producing a report card like that was the amount of time we spent of the first two years after the apology collecting the data which nobody had bothered collecting before.
HPR: So, what about this whole notion about the Indigenous Constitutional Recognition? Where is that going? Do you think that it will eventually occur?
KR: Yes, I committed to Indigenous Recognition in the Australian Constitution in 2007 election. We had consulted a process during the second term of the government with a view to bringing about the legislation in this term, although the government, of course, has changed. Prime Minister Abbott has indicated his support for Indigenous Recognition in the Constitution.
It depends entirely upon whether there’s agreement upon the language to be inserted in the Constitution so that a question is put to the Australian people with both sides of politics supporting them. Constitutional amendments, successful ones in Australia, are about as rare as they are in America. In fact, of our 44 constitutional referendums since 1901, only six have passed.
HPR: How does your National Apology Foundation factor into relations with Australian Indigenous people?
KR: The National Apology Foundation I announced in February of this year. It has a simple mandate, and with my board members I’m discussing its execution as we speak, and namely to provide funding for the possibility of a national apology chair on Indigenous policy in Australia which will supplement the annual reporting to the Parliament each year in Australia about what progress has been achieved on closing the gap. Our argument is having that in independent hands—as well as the government providing its own data—will be important for the future, so that we are not simply relying on Caesar to say that, “Caesar is doing well. Thank you very much.”
HPR: You alluded to Prime Minister Abbott, so I was curious about what you see as the biggest difference in your approach to governance as opposed to Prime Minister Abbott’s. Clearly you’re from different political viewpoints, and you two didn’t always exactly see eye-to-eye when you were prime minister and he was the leader of the opposition party, but at the same time you two do also share some common goals for Australia.
KR: I don’t comment on the current government, and that’s a judgment, a comparative judgment for others. So, happy to talk about my period in government, happy to talk about current global challenges, but my practice, and I think it’s an intelligent practice, is once you leave the political stage you don’t provide the rolling commentary on your own government versus the one that succeeds you.
HPR: Before venturing into politics, you focused your early academic career on Sinology. What prompted your interest in China?
KR: I grew up on a small farm in rural Queensland in Northeast Australia, the equivalent of growing up in a place like Arkansas here in America on a farm. So, neither of my parents had been much to high school. Neither of them had been to university. They were good farming types. I think, however, that my mother was a strong advocate of education, so whenever she could she would just buy me books. Because I had zero interest in animal husbandry, like zero, [laughs] if there’s something less than zero let’s call it that. Seriously, minus something-or-other in animal husbandry. I would simply disappear on my horse to the farthest reaches of our farm with a book and sit under a tree and read [laughs] and that’s where I discovered about this place called China. Purely through books.
HPR: And you just continued voraciously reading books about China and developed an interest?
KR: Oh yes. Yeah, I went to the local primary school, which was four teachers in the middle of nowhere. Then, a local state high school where there was an opportunity to study Chinese language. I began to address China in the context of Asian history. But then by the time I finished high school and having taken a gap year and wandering around Australia, I thought I really needed to understand this country more and I figured you couldn’t understand China more unless you understood the language. That’s why I went to the Australian National University. I had never met any Chinese folks up until that time.
HPR: Really? Until you went to university?
KR: That’s correct. They just weren’t around. Not where I grew up in Arkansas [Laughs].
HPR: How do you envision the relationship between the West and China developing over the next five to 15 years?
KR: That’s the core question alive in my policy research project here at Harvard. On balance, I’m optimistic that we can navigate a way through. Because of the alien nature of the two political systems, and the rise of China’s economy that is set to pass the United States in aggregate size in the next decade, and China’s expanding foreign policy interests and security policy interests in wider East Asia, some say that China is on an inevitable path towards a level of diplomatic conflict and possibly even other forms of conflict with the United States and Asia. I do not hold that view, but it is a view held by many.
I hold the view that there is sufficient commonality of values and interests between China and the United States and between China and the West for us to craft a new strategic relationship that accommodates China’s rise but at the same time accommodates the continuation of America’s strategic presence in the region and in the world and does so in a way that enables China to help build the new additions to the new rules-based order into the future which stabilizes the order rather than seeing China act unilaterally.
Part of my political rationale for doing this political research project is: how do we preserve the peace? How do we preserve prosperity? How do we do so by a current approach to sustainability, environmental sustainability, between China and America and the world, given that China and America now represent the two biggest polluters in the world? And, how do we do so in a manner which preserves the global rules-based system? That’s the core of my research project. I believe that each of those things is possible, and with some focused diplomatic work in Beijing and Washington, I think could even be probable. But, the naysayers would say, “these are two such radically different systems that it’s all going to drift in a reverse direction.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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