The former prime minister Scott Morrison has declared himself more into humility than power, detailing in a lengthy post-politics interview how the Aukus submarine deal was sealed and that the Quad regional dialogue was dreamed up over dinner.
Speaking on champion diver Sam Fricker’s Diving Deep podcast – a series of interviews with “high performers” – Morrison reflects on his time in office, the pressures facing prime ministers and how he approached the job.
He was not asked about taking on five extra ministerial portfolios in secret – nor did he bring it up. But he did express views on wielding power.
“I was always very wary of power and very wary of what it could do to you,” Morrison said. “And, so, humility, I think, is one of the most important things you need in life. It keeps you real. It keeps your feet on the ground. And family and friends are the other.”
The former prime minister said humility was the key teaching in his Christian faith.
“Now, people listening to this are going, ‘Oh, I didn’t think you were that humble’,” the former PM said. “Well, maybe that’s the case. Maybe that’s how I come across, I don’t know.”
Morrison defended the hardline stance he took against China which is now thawing under his successor, Anthony Albanese.
“I’m pleased that the government is now talking with the Chinese government,” he said on the podcast, which was published in full this week. “We’ve got to be careful … to not allow that thawing to be presented as isolating our partner and ally in the United States.”
At Fricker’s prompting, Morrison offered more details on how the US government was convinced to share its nuclear submarine technology with Australia, heralding the Aukus agreement to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.
“We took the view that the only way we were going to get a ‘yes’ on this was you had to convince the United States – what I call their ‘system’, which is the nuclear, naval establishment. The ones, you know, who sign off on the safety and the reactors and how it works and all of this. You had to convince all the experts first.”
Morrison said he could have asked then president Donald Trump personally.
“I’m quite sure he would have said ‘yes’ immediately,” Morrison said. “But I suspect when Donald went back to see the Pentagon, they would’ve found 50,000 reasons why it wouldn’t happen.”
Morrison said he and the Coalition government worked on key Pentagon officials first.
“It wasn’t a full ‘yes’ at that point but we got them to a ‘not no’,” he said, describing how he enlisted then British prime minister Boris Johnson to make a joint appeal to Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, who ultimately agreed to the pact.
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Morrison described himself as “the founding member” of the quadrilateral leaders’ dialogue involving Australia, the US, Japan and India, known as the Quad. He said that had been the brainchild of the late former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, hatched into a strategy over a dinner they shared in Darwin.
“We talked about this and we were very keen to progress it and we ended up getting it elevated to a leaders’ dialogue,” he said.
Running for almost 75 minutes, the discursive interview with Fricker – who lives in the Sutherland Shire within Morrison’s former electorate of Cook – covers international relations and security.
Morrison retired from politics earlier this year to join the US-based strategic consulting firm American Global Strategies.
The former Liberal leader, who was prime minister from 2018 until 2022, reflected on the two US presidents with whom he dealt in office. He described Biden as “an institutional veteran ... a Washington politician” who had an orthodox approach and understood Australia. Trump was “the complete opposite”.
“Donald was a disrupter…. and he was to their own system,” Morrison said. “That’s not a bad thing. There were some things that needed disrupting. If it wasn’t for Donald, then the world I don’t think would have called out China in the way that it has.”
He dismissed critics who have “obviously never run a country”. “It’s not as easy as they think.”