What does a prime ministerial chief of staff

do? What is the role? One of the things that I found when I first was offered the job was that there was no manual.

There is no how-to book.

That's so true.

Which is often the case with most advisory roles.

John Howard said to me at the time, I was a bit like the Stephen Bradbury of Chiefs of Staff in the sense that A couple of the chiefs of staff before me had fallen over or resigned for various reasons.

So I was about, I guess, the most senior person left in the office in a way.

That's right, in some

As Chief of Staff, because we're going to get on to other fascinating chapters of your life, talk to me about what you think your biggest achievements were in those nine years, including economic reform.

Look, on economic reform, there are a couple of things.

First of all, I participated in the formulation of that first budget in 1996.

We had come into government saying that there was an underlying budget deficit of $10 billion, which in those days sounded like a lot of money.

Because in those days you could add asset sales and that made the budget bottom line look better than it really was.

If you strip away those sorts of things, the underlying budget was in deficit and we were arguing we need to right the ship.

So before the election we put out a series of spending cuts across the board.

Because cancer affects everybody in Australia knows somebody as much as you want to about

W- what do you think? Is that easy to answer, that question?

question?I- i- it's not easy to answer that question, but I think the, the beginning of an answer is to see that there are structural factors here which are impelling the US to reappraise its role in the world, um, to focus more on domestic preoccupations, and they're some of the reasons that Donald Trump was able to get the White House.

It wasn't a brain snap by the American electorate that put Donald Trump in the White House.

It was because, uh, in 2016 and again in 2024, Trump was seen as the change agent at the time when a majority of Americans thought the country was going in the wrong direction.

Um, and so th- I think what Americans are wanting i- is a government that is putting more focus on, um, addressing some of the issues that we see domestically in terms of, uh, cost of living, um, in terms of, uh, the inequality in both wealth and income, um, addressing some of the infrastructure and other deficiencies that have to be sort, uh, fixed up, um, retooling industrial capacity.

Um, I'd be surprised if a future administration, Republican or Democrat, necessarily pushed back on some of the actual policies that have been implemented in recent times.

Where I think there would be a difference is that Trump's quite a unique political character.

Is, is that the big change that this Trump era is going to, um, leave us with?

He's speaking with ABC News Channel's Roz Childs.

Well, I think he's worked very hard.

He's always been a hard worker.

And I think for me, there are a couple of things that stand out.

Helping to pilot AUKUS legislation through the US Congress was important after we finalized AUKUS during my term there.

I think also the critical minerals compact, getting some actionable outcomes on that was very important.

Uh, But displaying the size of the Australian capital pool in the US, the super funds and others, is something that I think Kevin was deciduous in supporting and cultivating.

What sort of direction do you think he'll take on that with the United States?