I’ll explain the “accidental” gag soon — first, the important stuff.
In this episode I pick the formidable brain of John Anderson, second-in-charge of Oz from 1999 to 2005 and these days a serious player in the world of long-form podcasting. He was an early adopter of the web-based interview, launching his “Conversations” series in 2017 to tackle the big geopolitical and philosophical questions with public intellectuals. As he tells me, he needed some convincing years ago to interview a psychologist he’d never heard of called Jordan Peterson. The rest is history.
Anderson’s thirst for answers on how we should live led him to help found the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, a global organisation that aims to reaffirm Western values. The Alliance staged its inaugural conference in London in October 2023 with a rock star line-up. Back then, with many of us reeling from the outbreak of pro-Hamas sentiment on our streets and university campuses, the centre-right seemed to have the wind at its back. But things have since soured for the political right in parts of Europe, Canada and Australia: I ask Anderson what went wrong. Is it all Donald Trump’s fault?
Before he became a heterodox media star, Anderson, a sixth-generation farmer, held several ministries in the Howard Government and was former leader of the National Party — to overseas readers, that’s a rural-based party that together with the Liberal Party comprises Australia’s conservative Coalition. The Coalition marriage broke down momentarily in the aftermath of the Liberals’ historic drubbing in May’s federal election; Anderson was one of several former leaders enlisted as marriage counsellor. Something obviously worked: the parties stitched things up, for how long only time will tell.
Anderson airs his frustration with Labor’s election tactics and with what he (rightly) diagnoses as both parties’ desultory policy prescriptions. He also airs concerns about energy, Australia’s vulnerability in global supply chains, mounting government debt, a more aggressive China and the deteriorating mental health of young people in the digital age. And we moan about Donald Trump, a subject I pursued excessively, I reckon. There are many more conversations I’d like to have with Anderson on topics remote from the daily headlines.
And now to my blonde moment, which I’ve left uncut in the interests of transparency, and also because it’s sort of funny.
Later in our talk I say that before he entered politics Anderson had a brief stint as a reporter on a rural newspaper. I had written this down in my notes and raised it here, proud I’d done my homework. Turns out I was wrong. Anderson never worked as a rural reporter. He thinks I may have been reading about a different John Anderson, a person who, by coincidence, also moved among the Nationals in Canberra.
I reckon Anderson would have been a fantastic rural reporter had he ever tried his hand at it, which, of course, he hadn’t. He’s also gracious when others embarrass themselves. I’d intended to read Anderson’s authorised biography before our conversation but an unexpected study trip to Israel (more on that another time) got in the way.
The biography, Faith & Duty: The John Anderson Story by Paul Gallagher, charts a life marked by profound tragedy (I won’t go into details here) and extraordinary resilience. Anderson arrives at his Christian faith, and so much else, with great substance. We need more like him.
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