>>Good morning and welcome to Global Perspectives.

From our studio in Orlando, I'm David Dumke.

We are honored today to be joined from Australia by Senator David Van.

Senator Van represents Victoria and the Australian Senate and we're - it's a pleasure to have you on, Senator, welcome.

>>David thank you so much for having me on.

It's great to join your show.

Wonderful to see you again.

So I'm very much looking forward to this discussion.

>>Excellent.

Well, there's a lot of things I want to ask you, but let's start with isn't necessarily an easy question, but tell us a little about the state of US-Australian relations.

I know there's been a lot of talk in the last couple of years about the US, UK, Australian Defense Pact, and I know you serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee as well as Defense and trade committees are among your assignments.

>>Yes, so I'm on the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade.

I'm a deputy chair of the Foreign Affairs and Aid Subcommittee and I'm on the Defense subcommittee.

So this falls well within my wheelhouse.

And it's a it's an area that certainly in the three and a half years I've been in the Senate that I've been working on very hard, you know, as a as a real priority.

I think we saw certainly for those for your audience, I mean, our center right party, we lost government last May, now we have a center left party in government.

So certainly I can say in the lead up to last year's election, we saw a lifting in Australia US relations.

Like I don't think we've ever seen before, so certainly not in my lifetime in so, but that obviously culminated in the August Pact where Australia, the US and the UK came to an agreement to assist Australia not only acquire nuclear submarine technology but a range of other incredibly important technologies from from all sides.

And this is a three way street.

It's not even just a two way street.

So I think, you know, I don't think under this current government that relations have gone backwards.

I do worry about the future with certainly with their appointment of a former prime minister as our ambassador to the US.

But let's see how that pans out.

But I think without, you know, we're we're seeing certainly a zenith and that hopefully that trajectory keeps on going.

But you know, the feeling of Australians towards the US couldn't be stronger.

>>On this defense pact in particular, obviously there's a lot of talk about the Chinese threat in Asia.

I'd like to hear what Australia sees in China.

Obviously it's a it's a major trade partner of yours, It's also a neighbor and much closer proximity than than to Washington.

>>Yes, the geography is true, but I think the threat is much broader than than just a geographical one.

You know, the threat is, as we've seen in Ukraine with the Russian invasion, you know, threats to to even one country is a threat to all of us around the world.

Certainly all liberal minded democracies around the world have every reason to to be cautious and be careful and to be prepared.

And I think that's what we're AUKUS has taken it.

You know, I recently wrote a paper.

I'm doing a second masters at the moment.

I mean, that paper is titled, you know, is China Already at War with Taiwan?

And it's one of those nebulous questions that, you know, academics will debate with me through and through, and I'm sure my fellow politicians will debate with me.

But China, as we've seen over 70 years, you know, has fought a war of incrementalism, you know, whether it be the Paracels, the Spratlys, Senkakus, Taiwan.

You know, there is such a range of points that then become flashpoints, but could just as easily, you know, the trade war with Australia and with the US and other gray zone gray zone tactics that we see, you know, in the cyber domain and others, misinformation, disinformation.

This is all going on in real time and under any other context, you could call them aggressive tactics.

So I think the world is right to watch China, to hold it to account and to be prepared.

And this Australia and the US and what the world is riding into all their defense strategy, white papers or strategy papers currently around integrated defense is the right way to go.

You know, we are much stronger together.

And what I think Australia and the US do incredibly well is make good allies that are reliable and solid and will back each other every step.

>>You yourself have - have been have spoken out often on the - on Ukraine, Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Obviously there are issues there specific to Ukraine.

But there's also you were just talking about China and you have Taiwan right there.

Is there a fear of a similar situation if Russia is allowed to get away with going through Ukraine and occupying it, as you would see in China and Taiwan?

>>Yes, I wrote about this even before the invasion, that this is the threat that the world is facing, that that, you know, if one authorities, Syrian regime sees another authoritarian regime get away with any sort of aggression, you know, I think it's that the gloves are off and the fights on.

So luckily, the world has has got behind Ukraine.

I cannot think that the US government and the US people go for what it's done because you stand a million miles ahead of everyone else on what you have done.

I was in Ukraine August last year, believe I'm still the only Western MP that's been down into the area of operations.

Obviously, lots of Ukrainian and I was told at a multilateral forum last year by a number of Russian MPs and then they've been there.

And this war is a very real, very harsh war on the people of Ukraine.

And it's beholden to all of us to stand up, stand with Ukraine, provide as much material as possible.

I thought long and hard, particularly trying to push the Germans into sending leopard tanks in there.

Obviously the Brits have done their bit.

Now the US has stepped up with the Abrams.

Abrams M1 that is now the right sort of material that we're sending in.

What I was seeing through most of last year was countries were sending a lot of material, but not just the right kind.

So high mass was obviously a game changer when you said that in there.

I think the M1s and the leopards and the challenger tanks, maybe France in some of the close, but there's still more needed in the other the two platforms that I have been calling for long and hard for most of the last year is my battle tanks.

But then the fighter jets, without gaining some form of air superiority or at least, you know, having credible air defense, both having air to air, and that includes against other fighter jets, but also, you know, cruise missiles, but then air to ground strike is also incredibly important in this battle.

It's just the nature of this battle that it's the right platforms that are needed, not just more platforms.

>>You as you were saying, you've - you served on the Foreign Relations Committee.

Obviously, you're talking about Ukraine and Asian security issues.

I'd like you to explain a little to our viewers about what some of Australia's foreign policy objectives are.

In short, I know this is a very broad question, but it'd be helpful.

I think.

>>Well, you won't be surprised that it's to keep a free and open and prosperous Indo-Pacific.

We, like the US, adopted the Indo-Pacific as a as a region of interest for us, it is our region.

It's where we live.

Our East coast borders the Pacific, our West coast borders the Indian Ocean.

So we naturally straddle both of those.

And you know, geography is a is a great teacher of strategy.

And I always, whenever I talk about geo strategic matters or geopolitical, I always have a big map of the Indo-Pacific in front of me.

And it tells you a lot.

You know, there is a land bridge that comes down, you know, down the coast of Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, etc.

Then you've got two very small bits of water, you know, the Straits of Malacca and Malaysia, Singapore there and the Straits of Johor.

And it's - theyre going to become incredibly contested waters and how Australia, the US and our other allies work to do that will be incredibly important.

Obviously, we have a vested interest in the Indo-Pacific, as does our allies and friends like South Korea and Japan.

Overnight, we heard that the French were stepping up again with they were talking with our defense minister and foreign minister.

And it sounds like they're prepared to do a bit more in the Pacific.

Now they have national interest already in the in the Western Pacific.

But, you know, I think it's to be holding on them to to look at that broader region as well, not just defend their own national interests, but to defend the interests of liberal democracies.

>>Trade, obviously is an important component of this.

Could you explain some of your trade partner, key trade partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region and globally?

>>Yes, certainly.

Obviously, China is our largest trading partner by some way.

Unlike most countries, we export more to them than they export to us.

So you know, they've had us over a barrel over the past few years and have used trade or geoeconomic coercion is one of those gray zone tactics that that I've talked about again overnight and since the 20th Congress.

I think we've seen some softening of that.

And there was some news overnight that it looks like some of our coal ships might be heading back to China.

But, you know, there's still you know, they've got massive tariffs on our barley.

They've stopped without even using tariff structures.

There's still now a wine exports, believe it or not, lobster exports.

And, you know, that's a much loved commodity up there as I think our wine has become over over the last decade or two as well.

So I think the Chinese consumer is looking forward to some of this.

Obviously, the barley gets used in Chinese beer.

You know, I've heard anecdotally that no one's liked Chinese beer as much as when they were using Australian barley.

So but, you know, I know they used some US barley to do that.

So at least some of their beer selling pretty good as well.

>>One of the export products of Australia, you're you're blessed with mineral resources but one of your, your primary exports is coal.

And I know you have an interest also in improving in climate change is also one of your interests.

How do you balance those two coa can be quite a dirty fuel and environmental protection?

>>Yeah, well, and since we met in in Sharm el Sheikh for COP27, I've always been interested this space over background in the energy industry here in Australia.

I think what we need to do as a nation first is clean up our own backyard.

We, our coal fleets retiring very, very quickly.

We need to set a trajectory to be able to cover that off with renewables and a deep storage.

We're seeing a move away from that with this government.

Yes, they're trying to add in more renewable energy, but they're trying to do it by adding in your long range transmission, which no one wants in their backyard.

So I think there's going to be some real challenges for them to meet their 43% target.

I'm doing a piece of work at the moment which is rewriting what we call our energy technology roadmap.

Some of the things I learned in Sharm el-Sheikh are on there, but also, you know, there's some incredibly important and powerful technologies that have been developed here in Australia that I think are going to go a long way to solving not just our emissions problems and energy supply and our electricity grids was built to transmit energy from a source to the cities.

And where that load is used.

(COMPUTER CHIMES) We now have a problem where some of the properties of introducing a lot of renewables that produce DC electricity pumping it into an AC grid is going to cause both some supply and security issues, you know, for our national electricity market.

So we've been doing a lot of work.

How do you resolve that?

Now the coal export part of it is, you know, we export 80 plus billion dollars, nearly $90 billion with the coal to the world.

That coal is some of the cleanest in the world.

So, you know, if a country is going to keep on burning coal, you know, our view is, okay, well, let's at least send them clean coal.

We know that's going to phase out over time.

As the world moves towards net zero by 2050, you know that is going to have to be phased out.

But at the moment, those exports are paying for an awful lot of what is needed in and out transition.

You know, our Paris targets 43% I think can and should be higher.

And I will be arguing that over over this calendar year and putting forward a credible plan on how to get there as well.

But, you know, let's not deceive ourselves the transition to net zero and especially to even to our Paris targets.

And by “we ” I mean, all of world is going to be long, hard and very, very expensive.

Our coal exports pay for an awful lot of that transition.

So, you know, I think we would be cutting our nose to spite our face and not lowering our emissions if we were to stop exporting coal.

But we can also do things.

And so the things I've been working hard on is how do we you know, we're a huge iron ore exporter, $100 billion worth of iron ore each year, you know, things like that, rather than we're putting effectively rock on a ship and shipping across to to a smelter.

You know, I'm encouraging some of our iron ore companies to build smelters on the side of their mines power with renewable electricity and turn it into green iron and then shipping it to, you know, our friendly nations like Korea and Japan to turn into green steel, which we know with the European carbon barriers coming into force in 2025, no country is going to be able to meet their targets without green steel plus green cement and green aluminum.

And I think if we get our power mix right, we will be able to be a net exporter of those which will eventually replace, you know, coal, LNG, you know, as I think further down the track, you know, countries will stop using that.

But we will also be able to replace that with a very credible and large hydrogen industry, which we're working incredibly hard at doing at the moment.

>>Of course, when you're when you're in politics as you are, you represent people and these are jobs.

And some of the jobs are tied to industries that may not be the most environmentally friendly.

So it's always a very difficult balance.

But I want to look at the positive side of opportunities.

What are some of the opportunities you see by having more of a Green policy?

You know, in Australia.

>>It's enormous.

As I just said, you know, I believe Australia can and will be a net exporter of hydrogen, one of the largest in the world.

But that won't happen just by adding more renewables there.

There are countries with nuclear energy that can run.

Hydrolysis 24/7.

The economics of running hydrolysis to produce hydrogen on a part time basis, i.e.

when there's excess solar or wind, you know, dont quite stack up as well.

So the energy technology roadmap I'm working on is do we need to look at bringing nuclear into the system?

You know, and I'm only talking about the SMR end of nuclear.

I've been this debate, I think certainly here in Australia, that the large scale nuclear won't have a place and won't be accepted by the Australian people and we have some legislative barriers to get over.

We have a moratorium on nuclear energy here in Australia currently, but there's a lot of work that I think we can do before the next election to both convince our people and the world that we can do nuclear safely and that it's not a there are no proliferation issues, that it's going to help firm up our grid.

So take away some of that supply security concerns that I currently have is, you know, if you're only looking at batteries, you're talking about shallow storage.

In some states, we're blessed with pumped hydro, which will also contribute to that mix.

And I'm very bullish on pumped hydro in Australia.

But again, some states a very dry and pumped hydro would be an issue.

So states like South Australia, in Western Australia where you know, they dry, they're remote and if your audience haven't been, if some of these parts of Australia, they are very, very remote, like you'd be blown away by how remote they are.

You know, I've been to some remote parts of the US and then Nevada etc.

and yet here they seem like a stone's throw from from a major city compared to what's what it's like in Australia.

So I can see, you know, some siting opportunities for SMRs attached to our mining industry.

They can help support the grid being the first steps to introduce nuclear into the Australian energy mix in a very safe way from a siting point of view isn't engaging with people.

I don't want that in my backyard.

So it's a you know, I think it's a great opportunity for us and I think that will help bump up our Paris targets or whatever we go to in 2020, COP 2025, where everyone's going to be asked to bump up their 2035 target.

So I think that theyre all important considerations on both how we structure our export mix and how we keep those jobs.

And when we were in government, we did a lot of work around where coal is being mined or use as an energy source at the moment.

How do we turn them into renewable energy hubs?

We keep the industry going in those areas, build out new industries and and then, you know, keep those jobs in Australia.

>>You've had - Australia has had a lot of problems with droughts, of course, in the past as well as other natural disasters.

Are you seeing these occur in a more frequent basis because of climate change?

>>It's a really interesting question and I think there is - our Bureau of Meteorology Meteorology is saying yes, they are becoming more frequent, but Australia has always been a country of droughts, flooding rains, bushfires or wildfires, as you would call them.

And there's a very famous poem written in 1924 from a poet, Dorothy McKellar, that talks about a land of droughts and flooding plains.

This is not new.

And even in the most recent floods, very few of the floods hit the same sort of levels that we've seen over the last century.

Some did you know that that's the nature of historic events.

And of course they are major and historic events and that the damage done has been terrible.

But they're not new to Australia.

So that's not to deny that climate change has played, played a part, it very well has, it most likely has.

But they're not a new phenomenon here in Australia, whereas in some countries I think some countries are seeing these as new phenomena that they just part of the Australian landscape.

>>When you're talking about climate and environment, environmental protection issues per se, you're you're a member of the center right party and the center left party is, is in power right now.

What are some are there big differences on environmental approach or is there consensus that environment is an important issue to constituents?

You may talk about it differently, but it's a critical part of your your agenda.

>>It definitely is a critical part of it.

And we achieved enormous emissions reductions while we were in government and that bit's glossed over a lot in the media.

We actually achieved some enormous targets and we were, you know, well on track to get to 35, 38% by 2030.

And we were saying that last year that that was doable then.

So we've achieved a lot.

You know, we're hearing a lot of talk at the moment, not seeing a lot of movement in the plan that the current government has put forward I don't think is credible.

You know, after a large part of my career in the energy industry and working on and for the the electricity grid, I can see Australia have suffering from security challenges by having a lack of energy security in coming years, decades.

If our coal fleet retires faster than we're prepared currently prepared for, Australia is in a world of hurt.

You know, and any government that can't keep the lights on, you can't run the country.

And that's when our economy will really suffer and people's jobs will really suffer.

So I'm very bullish on higher targets.

But I also think we need a more credible path to get there.

And you know, those are using mature technologies like pumped hydro like nuclear.

These are the things that are going to help us get there, looking at ways where we can siting wind and solar near transmission rather than having to build new transit transmission or siting with solar in ways that it's near where where that energy is used, you know, it's far more efficient.

It's less CapEx, it's some great Australian technologies that are going to allow us to do exactly that.

And I'm working hard with those companies and those universities at the moment to help develop those and get those moving.

We've got some some great medium to deep storage technologies coming through.

So I think I'm seeing a way to get to more ambitious targets and to protect the planet and to slow global warming.

And as I think Australia has done and will do more than its fair share of all of that.

>>So we have time for just one more quick question.

It's not really a quick one, but we'll have to make it quick, and that's on the environmental issues.

How closely are Australia and the United States coordinating or cooperating?

>>That's a good question.

Now, being out of government, I'm not probably close enough to that to tell.

Your IRA was, Inflation Reduction Act was, I think, a great clarion call.

It's incentivizing American companies to to do more.

And that's that's your government's job is as well what I'm trying to work on with some of my colleagues and friends in the US and in other countries is okay, how do we not have such a siloed effect?

How do we look at it?

Where is the best bang for buck?

You know, does some of these Australian technologies Ive been talking about, you know, could they play a role in helping the US reduce its emissions?

You know, there's there's there's a lot of work to be done.

I'm hoping to be over there again in coming months and have some of these discussions with your congressmen and senators, you know, in some of your think tanks and universities.

So there's I think there's a lot of work we can do together.

You know, it's just a matter of getting on and getting it done.

>>Absolutely.

Senator Van, thank you so much for joining us today.

And we hope you will make a stop in Florida when you when you come to the United States.

>>Thank you, David.

Great to see you again.

And hopefully we get to talk again soon.

>>Thanks.

And thank you for joining us.

We'll see you again next week on another episode