TONY JONES: Good evening. And welcome to Q&A and the Sir John Clancy Auditorium at the University of New South Wales. I'm Tony Jones. Answering your questions tonight, the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates. Please welcome our guest.
Thank you. Well, because Mr Gates is only in Australia for 14 hours, tonight's program is a first ever pre-recorded Q&A. As usual, it is being simulcast on ABC News 24 and though we won't be able to answer your Twitter questions, we would like to see your Twitter comments published on the screen. So please join the conversation now with the #qanda hashtag.
Well, Bill Gates is the world's most generous philanthropist. He made billions as the co-founder of Microsoft, the company which led the way in personal computing and changed the way that we all work and live. He's now on and off the world's richest man and he's established the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with the intention of giving away most of his wealth away by targeting billions of dollars at health and education projects around the world. He's visiting Australia to convince Australians to continue and to expand our aid program and he joins us tonight as a guest of the University of New South Wales and the Pacific Friends of the Global Fund. We have an audience of 900 students, graduates and guests and they have got a lot of questions, so let's get started. Our very first question tonight comes from Betty Zeng
TOUGH PHILANTHROPY
BETTY ZENG: Hello, Mr Gates. It's really exciting to meet you in person. My question is: so you mentioned that your friend Warren Buffett once gave you some really great advice on philanthropy. He said, "Don't just go for the really safe projects. Take on the really tough problems." What would you say is your toughest project that you face in your foundation?
BILL GATES: Yes, Warren is very clear that the role of philanthropy is to do very tough things. The easy things can be solved by government or others. And I'd say the most difficult thing we work on is improving the US' education system. The idea of how do you measure teachers, how do you give them feedback, how do you help them develop, how do you make there is the right incentive system around that. Very little has been put into that, and yet if you could make the teachers significantly better, the impact on equality, the impact on where the country would go would be pretty phenomenal. So I'd say that's the toughest thing we work on, even tougher than inventing new vaccines.
TONY JONES: What would be the most ambitious program then, because getting rid of the polio vaccine by 2018 is a pretty huge task?
BILL GATES: Yeah, eradicating polio, I think we have very strong odds of succeeding on that. We're down to three countries. We've had very successful fundraising over the last several months and it's 5.5 billion, but we're using new tactics. We've looked where it's been challenging and we have less than 300 cases and only three countries so I'd rate our odds as pretty good.
TONY JONES: We've got a question in the audience on this topic. From Gillian Thomas.
POLIO SURVIVORS
GILLIAN THOMAS: Mr Gates, polio survivors needs special services because of post-polio syndrome and polio's late effects. Countries rarely provide these services and survivors are ignored. In Australia, most of the 400,000 polio survivors are excluded from our new National Disability Insurance Scheme and Polio Australia is without government funding. No-one will celebrate polio's eradication more than polio survivors; however, even after eradication there will still be millions of survivors worldwide requiring polio services for up to 80 years. What strategies will get governments to shoulder their responsibility and fund essential post-polio services?
BILL GATES: Well, you're absolutely right that polio syndrome, challenges and all sorts of disabilities are very important issues. And particularly in these very poor countries, they are not given a lot of attention. I knew when I held a girl named Hoshman, who was only 2 years old in India who didn't really understand what it meant for her life that she was paralysed, that the likelihood of her having the full life that she deserved was not very good. Hopefully we can use this polio success to raise the visibility of the fact that there's still people out there who need help but first and foremost we want to make sure that no one else has to go through that and that's where we're very close, and it will free up a lot of money for other health activities.
TONY JONES: Gillian, can I just come back to you for your response to that? I mean I understand you are a polio survivor yourself and I must say I'm quite shocked to hear that you're not covered by the Disability Care Scheme.
GILLIAN THOMAS: No, unfortunately it is the age 65 cut-off that is going to exclude us because the polio vaccines came out about getting on for 65 years ago and I got polios five years too soon, unfortunately.
TONY JONES: Is there a way of dealing with this issue? I mean, could you use the money you save once you eradicate the disease - I think you're talking about billions of dollars in savings. Could that be used to help the survivors who are living on?
BILL GATES: Yeah. Well, certainly, you know, the health funds are fungible and so every country will look at what they're doing on disability and other things and, you know, hopefully it keeps polio in the forefront.
TONY JONES: Okay. We've got a video on another extremely difficult problem, on malaria. It comes from Iraingo Moses from the Oil Health Search Foundation in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
PNG MALARIA
IRAINGO MOSES: For the last 20 years we have been hearing we will have a malaria vaccine within five years. Given that malaria has been driven from countries with good health services without the need for a vaccine, how much hope and effort should be placed on development of a vaccine or new drugs rather than strengthening health services, especially when countries with a large malaria burden, like Papua New Guinea, have poor vaccine coverage rates and poor functioning health services.
TONY JONES: Okay, Bill, we know you work with Oil Search in Papua New Guinea. The search for a vaccine is what this is about?
BILL GATES: Well, in fact, there is very little money being spent on a malaria vaccine. It was mind blowing to me that when our foundation gave $40 million for malaria vaccine research, we became the biggest funder in the world and whenever you have a disease that at that time was killing a million children a year, and now because of bed nets we're down to more like 700,000, the idea that the world can't take, you know, even 10% of what it spends on, say, a baldness drug, and put it towards a malaria vaccine seemed pretty stunning to me. And yet the people who suffer from malaria don't have a lot of money and so their voice in the marketplace is very weak. So only through government research or foundations will we pull that money together. Now, I'm quite optimistic that we understand enough about malaria. We can do what are called challenge models that will eventually come up with one. In parallel though, we're also coming up with better drugs and drugs that are far less expensive. There's a drug that's been worked on here in Australia that will be a single-dose drug and so the compliance, the need to come back to the health service and take the multiple doses, the side effects will be eliminated, so a lot of the innovation lets you do delivery, even in very tough places where PNG is one of the toughest places to deliver health interventions.
TONY JONES: Okay. We've got a lot of questions to get to. The next one comes from Charlotte Regan.
AUSTRALIAN AID PAUSE
CHARLOTTE REGAN: How justifiable do you think it was for the Federal Government to blame a lack of predicted revenue for delaying their anticipated increase foreign aid?
BILL GATES: Well, the key thing I see is the incredibly positive impact of foreign aid. If we look at how we're saving children's lives, getting reproductive health tools out to women, where they choose to have less children voluntarily, improving seeds so that farmers can growth enough for their kids to eat, to have the nutrition to succeed at school, it's phenomenal. And yet because these programs are far away, a lot of people don't recognise the impact of what even 0.5% can do. And so Australia is to be thanked for the fact that its aid budget has gone up and, in a sense, the sooner you get to 0.5%, the bigger impact you are going to have, so I was disappointed at the delay, but the trend is still pointing in the right direction.
TONY JONES: We've heard your diplomatic answer to this a few times today but I understand, in truth, you were pretty angry when you heard that Australia was shirking its promise to actually do this. Is that true?
BILL GATES: No, I don't tend to get angry. I don't think that's very constructive. I think if people could all visit, it would make a difference, and that's why those who do get a chance need to come back and witness it and make people feel good about what's being done. Certainly the world economy is such that all these development budgets are under pressure. In fact, you know, the deficits and debt levels in other countries are very, very high, and yet some of them, like the UK, are continuing to make very significant increases, moving up, in their case, to 0.7%.
TONY JONES: And it's always significant when someone of your stature comes to persuade our leaders behind closed doors. Now, you are known as a mathematical genius. Given Australia's electoral math, how important was it that you came to see Tony Abbott?
BILL GATES: Well, I'm not a pollster and I saw both parties at length today.
TONY JONES: But we know you can add up and so can most of the people in this room, and the strong likelihood is he will be the Prime Minister by the end of this year. So I'm wondering behind closed doors did you get a commitment from him?
BILL GATES: Well, I spoke as somebody with expertise. I'm not an Australian voter, so I don't get to ask for things. But these are things where I've taken, you know, the money that I've earned and decided to get behind them. And so whenever you have a management mentality, hearing from a business-type person why they think this is the very best way to spend money, I think, you know, a little bit you realise, hey, it's not soft thinking, it's not just that these are sad causes, it's because of the real change.
TONY JONES: And was he receptive to your arguments?
BILL GATES: He couldn't have been nicer.
TONY JONES: Yes, Okay. He is a politician. The next question...
BILL GATES: Well, I didn't ask him to write a cheque or anything.
TONY JONES: Perhaps next time you could.
BILL GATES: Alright. Well, the Government in power did announce today an extra 80 million for polio which was absolutely phenomenal.
TONY JONES: Yep. Okay. Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Dave Kennedy.
AUSTRALIAN PHILANTHROPY
DAVE KENNEDY: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given $18 million to the Kirby Institute UNSW to conduct HIV/AIDS research. Following on from that, Chuck Feeney's Foundation gave 10 million to help build new facilities for the Kirby Institute UNSW to help do that research. Now, we are thrilled - I'm thrilled as an Australian - that the American billionaires are coming here and helping us with all of this medical research, funds, it's very difficult here, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, but particularly for HIV/AIDS and I appreciate that America and Australia have different traditions when it comes to philanthropy. Can you tell us how you and Melinda decided to give so much away to folks outside of your family and why do it in your lifetimes and not in your last will and testament?
BILL GATES: Well, Chuck Feeney, who you mentioned, is one of the great philanthropists of the age and I encourage everybody to look at his example. He has pretty given away 99% of his money to phenomenal things, and it's really a great example that both Melinda and I have learned from. You know, when you're lucky enough to have substantial wealth, what are the possibilities? You can build a pyramid. You can have, you know, 400 people fan you. There's kind of a limit to consumption and so then you have to say, what do you feel? What are you affiliated to? What really counts for you? If you feel like you're a citizen of the world and you want to help all of humanity, then you think, 'Where is the greatest injustice?' And I think a mother having to bury a child or having that child have so much sickness that their brain never develops so they can't learn, they can't contribute in any way, you know, that was a tragedy that Melinda and I decided to learn about and see were there some miracle interventions, sort of the equivalent of the micro processor, personal computer, that could be created. And so in doing that we fund scientists all over the world. In fact, this year we will fund here in Australia about 40 million of science for health and agriculture and that's done strictly on a, well, whoever does the best work in the world is who is going to end up getting that money. And so it's a real testament to the quality of the science in Australia that a lot of that happens.
TONY JONES: Bill, at the core of that question was another question, I think, and that is why Australian philanthropists aren't stepping up to the mark? Two Americans named there. We don't hear a lot about Australian philanthropy. Are our billionaires too greedy?
BILL GATES: Well, I don't think philanthropy should be promoted just, you know, to make people feel bad or anything. I think when people see examples and they see that it can be done well - I mean it's uncomfortable at first because it's different to making money. In business you make money and you're good at and you understand the metrics. You've seen it at work. And so when you make the transition to start giving away, you feel, you know, very naive and, of course, charity - it's very hard to get it right. I do think philanthropy all over the world is on the increase. I think that's true of all levels of wealth. I think the idea of people who do philanthropy getting together and talking about what we do well, what's gone wrong, I think there's some value to that. We have got a global group called The Giving Pledge that is now international. Andrew Forrest is a member of that. I think all of that will encourage more people to come in but they should do it because they are passionate about something, because they want to be philanthropic and, you know, I don't think you can take it with you so, you know, what's the alternative?
TONY JONES: Okay, let's move on. Our next question is from Grace Delfendahl.
THE "CULT OF GREED"
GRACE DELFENDAHL: Hi, Mr Gates. First off it's a great privilege to be here to be able to hear you talk today. My question is that recent quotes from Pope Francis has shown that he believes that the cult of money has made life misery for millions of people and that capitalism has created a tyranny. As a person who has benefitted greatly from capitalism but has also used this in so many fantastic ways, what would your response be to this?
BILL GATES: Well, my response is that if you look at life over the last 200 years or 50 years or any reasonable period of time, life has improved incredibly. If you think about the treatment of women, if you think about the treatment of gay people, if you think about children dying - 200 years ago, 40% of all children died before the age of five. People didn't have a chance to learn to be literate and to read books. Average life spans were less than 40 years. And so in a span of not too much time, even compared to human history, we have made unbelievable progress. The things we take for granted, the ability to go out and learn things, to have air conditioning, to have clothing, to have a toilet, it's pretty phenomenal. So anybody who looks at what capitalism does and say, 'Okay, it's been a net loss," versus that life we had before, I think there is some loss of perspective there. I don't claim capitalism is perfect, but the era of time in terms of human rights and the quality of living, that's very clear. We should work to make it better, to deal with those imperfections, but, no, capitalism, the broad system we're in, which is mixed capitalism and government, has been a great blessing to humanity
TONY JONES: Okay. We've got a question on a different side of capitalism. This one is from Matthew Thomas.
TAX DODGERS
MATTHEW THOMAS: After the recent global crackdown on tax minimisation schemes used by Microsoft, Apple and several other firms, will you change your current financial strategies and bring capital out of tax havens and back into countries to honestly pay your tax.
BILL GATES: I hope I heard that.
TONY JONES: I could repeat it for you.
BILL GATES: Yeah. I'm one of those rare people who is actually for taxes. Your know, I've paid over $6 billion in taxes in the United States gladly. You know I feel like the services I get from the Government are extremely worthwhile and all those tech companies, as far as I know, you know, are absolutely following all the rules about taxation. They are also, you know, fairly big taxpayers, so if somebody wants those companies to pay a higher percentage of profit and taxes, they should change the rules and make that happen. I think it's great that that debate is taking place, but it's not incumbent on those companies to take shareholder money and pay huge amounts that aren't required. You really need - you need to have the rules say what the mechanism is if you want to make that a greater source of tax collection.
TONY JONES: But according to the Senate committee who are looking at this, and they accused Apple of being one of the biggest tax dodgers in American history, I mean according to them these tax minimisation schemes are not ethical. They may be legal but they're not ethical and in Microsoft's case they saved $4.5 billion over a couple of years of money they would otherwise would have paid for taxes to pay for health and education and so on. Do you think that's justifiable?
BILL GATES: I think in a system of laws, it's very important that you if you follow the laws, that you don't have some other second standard. I mean for somebody buying shares in a company, say, Google or something like that, do you expect them to just go and write cheques for tens of billions? I mean, you know, the people who write tax laws are the ones who should decide what things are and there shouldn't be some separate story about what is ethical as opposed to what the law says.
TONY JONES: So it's okay to look for loopholes so you pay less tax if you are a big corporation? That's what they're being accused of?
BILL GATES: Well, the idea that taxes that you do on income outside the United States, that's not a loophole. I mean it's a fact about the US tax system. It's actually fairly unusual that we actually compute your extraterritoriality tax and at some point we say, "We'll, tax it." The thing that's interesting is the European countries are going to look at this and realise that they don't even see the extraterritoriality piece of this thing. But this have not a morality play. This is about the laws. You know, if people want taxes at certain levels, great, set them at those levels. Those companies will be glad to comply to any of those rules.
TONY JONES: Okay, let's move on. You're watching a edition of Q&A. We're talking to Bill Gates. The next question comes from Anthony Liang.
INTROVERTS
ANTHONY LIANG: Hi Bill. You named Susan Cain's The Power of Introverts as one of your favourite Ted Talks. My question for you is how have you managed to succeed in a predominantly extroverted world and how can the education system, with its increasingly extroverted ideals, harness the positive features of the introverted personality?
BILL GATES: Well, I think introverts can do quite well. I think that there is - you know if you're clever you can learn to get the benefits of being an introvert, which might be, say, being willing to go off for a few days and think about a tough problem, read everything you can, push yourself very hard to think out on the edge of that area, and then, if you come up with something, if you want to hire people, get them excited, build a company around that idea, you better learn what extroverts do, you better hire some extroverts, like Steve Ballmer I would claim as an extrovert, and tap into both sets of skills in order to have a company that thrives both as in deep thinking and building teams and going out into the world to sell those ideas.
TONY JONES: We've got a related question. It comes from Elleena Yang.
TEENAGE GEEK - SELF-CONFIDENCE
ELLEENA YANG: Mr Gates, thank you for answering my questions. You used to lack self-confidence and were socially awkward in your teenage years. How did you eventually find a solid self-identity and confidence within yourself? Did achieving financial security, success and fame boost your self-confidence? What drives and motivates you to get up every morning and, more generally, how can the average person figure out their driving force and their inspiration and passion?
BILL GATES: Well, I think, I mean, some self-confidence is different than finding your passion. From a young age, ideally you will have adults in your life, preferably your parents as part of that, some of your teachers, people around you, who like you and they're behind you and they will back you, no matter what goes on, and that gives you enough confidence to go off on a quest and during that quest you try different things out. If you're lucky when you're very young, you find something you're passionate about. I did when I was 13 years old. I found computers and software. It took me another five years to figure out that was my life's primary work, but that's a lucky thing. Other people, you know, get up into their 20s or even later before they find what they're passionate about, but proceeding with a certain set of self-confidence, that there are people who care for you, you care for them, that you succeed in their eyes by how you treat them, I think that's pretty basic and it gives you the platform on which to try out new things, to fail, you know, first you're not going to succeed in various things, so self-confidence is primary and then finding your passion is an adventure, a quest that may take time, and it may switch over the time of your life, but those deep relationships will let you pursue it with vigour.
TONY JONES: I don't want to bring us down a peg or two, but is it true you spent two weeks working up the courage to invite a girl to the school prom?
BILL GATES: I don't know how long it took me, but she did turn me down.
TONY JONES: Okay. Our next question is from Reeta Dhar.
AFFORDABLE MEDICINE AND PATENTS
REETA DHAR: Mr Gates, affordability of medicine is one of the key issues facing many of the poorest people in societies across both the developing and the developed worlds. One of the catalysts is the long-term patents issued to pharmaceutical companies that, at the end of the day, operate for profit. As an astute businessman, an innovator and philanthropist, do you believe that such mechanisms are critical to drive innovation in the field of medicine, or are these simply market distorting mechanisms that help create monopolies? If patents are indeed necessary or indispensable, what needs to change in the system to make medicine accessible to those who need it the most?
BILL GATES: Well, one of the most amazing things that happen is that the pharmaceutical companies, as we're going to them and saying, "Hey, we, you know, need to help out those poorest in the world," they're willing to offer for these countries, absolutely break-even type pricing. So whether it's drugs or vaccines, the poorest of the world - we are getting out the high-volume medicines to them. In fact, we go to the companies and we offer to take the risk, we do volume commitments and we are constantly getting those prices down. We use competitive tenders and so we've gotten companies from all over the world, including low-cost Indian manufacturers to come in and get the prices down to the lowest level possible and so you need to have a system where somebody is paying enough to fund the research and the poorest in the world are getting it at just a break-even cost. And, in fact, we do a yearly ranking of the pharmaceutical companies called the Access to Medicine Index, that calls out the different programs of them and in general they've been moving up. The ones that are lower call us up, talk about how they can do better, so I would say that's an industry that is very well behaved. Now, it doesn't mean that we've magically figured out exactly how to do the tiered pricing. If you knew somebody's income level, then you could do the right pricing where I would pay the most and, you know, so on down the line. Right now we use country boundaries as a proxy, where the poorest countries got a very low price, the richer countries get the highest price. That's imperfect in that if you are a poor person in a rich country then you need the Government to stand in for you with some sort of medical scheme. If you're a rich person in a poor country, maybe you get a better deal than you deserve. But by and large, the billions that are put into research are phenomenal. If we think about why will health be better 20 years from now, it's that profit, private sector innovation built on government-funded basic research. That combination has been absolutely phenomenal in advancing medical products.
TONY JONES: Yet there has been a tremendous amount of counterfeiting of medicines by poor countries or within poor countries to make medicines even cheaper. Is that legitimate?
BILL GATES: Well, the term "counterfeiting" actually means making something that's inferior, and that is not good. Counterfeit means not the real thing and, in terms of being adultered, not having enough, you know, the reason we get drug-resistance particularly in the case of malaria, is people have made drugs that are only partially powerful enough and so you develop resistance there. And so because the companies are willing to do this break-even-type pricing, you really don't have to compromise. You can use the generics industry, the low-cost formulators and you don't have to go to what we call the counterfeit.
TONY JONES: All right. We've got a lot of tricky questions in this area. Here is one from Roy Kwan
ETHICAL INVESTMENT
ROY KWAN: Hello Bill. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is separated into two entities: one to give money to charities and grants. The other is to invest assets to generate a profitable return. Problems can arise and may have already arisen when the goals of the two separate entities conflict with each other. For example if the foundation invests in a for-profit organisation, which actually contributes to the very problems that the foundation has been set up to address. What controls have been put in place to prevent the foundation from investing in companies which undermine the underlying goal of the foundation? And has the foundation ever withdrawn investments into companies which actually contribute to the inequalities of the world?
BILL GATES: Yeah. So as the questioner said, the assets of the foundation are invested in bonds and stocks. So we might own car companies or various things. We have various prohibitions. For example, we don't own tobacco companies. We don't own weapons companies. There is a list of companies that were involved in Sudan that a group got together, mostly universities and us and decided, okay, that was a banned list that none of us would invest in. We spent a lot of time in looking at the so-called proxies of the companies we own to see what sort of initiatives are on there. And, you know, sometimes we'll vote against management. There have been a few gay rights issues that we voted against management on. But we don't pretend that the nature of our investments, you know, in and of themselves that's the good we do for the world. So, for example, we, from time to time, owned US Government bonds. It doesn't mean that we endorse, you know, every soldier in the American army's activities that day. You know, we own car companies. You know, we're not the ultimate court of justice. We simply buy investments that are, you know, properly and policed by governments and then we do our good work through our donations and so from time to time a car company will do something wrong or a, you know, bank might make a bad loan or...
TONY JONES: Well, you had this investigation by the LA Times in 2007, which was one of the darker moments in terms of publicity for the foundation.
BILL GATES: I wouldn't say that.
TONY JONES: That well, they suggested that you were investing millions...
BILL GATES: They didn't suggest it, they wrote a great article. Why did they suggest that? It was brilliant
TONY JONES: They wrote saying you were investing billions in Shell and Exxon and Chevron and Total, these oil companies which were blanketing the Niger Delta with pollution, while at the same time - and making children sick they said, while at the same time you were doing your vaccine programs in the same area, and they said these two things contradicted each other. So did you actually change practices after that?
BILL GATES: No. Those oil companies are not out to make children sick and nor is, you know, whether we own 0.1% of them going to save any children's lives. So we're in a world of cause and effect. When we buy vaccines and get them out there, we're into saving lives. We're not into patting ourselves on the back that, 'Oh, we don't own shares in that company.' The most controversial thing we own are US Government bonds. I mean I disagree with a lot of things the US Government does and so how can I own their bonds? I've even owned Australian bonds. I mean so, no, I do not endorse every action of things that I own investments in but nor are we the court of justice. We're not going to take our thousand people who are malaria experts, TB experts and, you know, go around and look at every oil employee - oil company employee. I happen to know something about the Niger Delta situation that, you know, I don't blame them as actors at all but the general point is that we're about our grants and otherwise we're just a typical investor, where the governments are setting the rules.
TONY JONES: Okay. Let's move on. Our next question is from Kashfia Rahman.
DEAD AID
KASHFIA RAHMAN: I hope my voice doesn't crack now. Mr Gates, Dead Aid, a book by Dambisa Moyo, illustrates that giving more aid in Africa over the course of the years did not help alleviate poverty, instead it kept the economy crippled with governments asking for more aid. This flow made a cycle of aid-giving which resulted in nothing productive and it has not been used to solve the immediate - nothing except solving the immediate problems and the money is not being used to make businesses sustainable in Africa. What is the foundation's view in this regard?
TONY JONES: So that's obviously a question about whether aid in Africa has had negative consequences. There's been new analysis about that. What are your views on that?
BILL GATES: Well, it depends on you value system. You know, over the last 20 years the number of children who die in Africa every year has been cut in half and, you know, is that good or not good? It's largely due to vaccines and the aid programs that have been there in Africa. You know, I think that that book actually did damage generosity of rich-world countries. You know, people have excused various cutbacks because of it.
TONY JONES: You read the book obviously. Did you find...
BILL GATES: Actually, yes
TONY JONES: Did you find anything in it of use?
BILL GATES: I found that she didn't know much about aid and what aid was doing. You know, she is an aid critic. There is not many because it's moralistically a tough position to take, given what aid has been able to do. But if you look objectively of what aid has been able to do, you would never accuse of it creating dependency. Having children not die is not creating a dependency. Having children not being so sick they can't go to school, not having enough nutrition so their brains don't develop, that is not a dependency, that's an evil thing and books like that - they're promoting evil.
TONY JONES: Okay. Let's move on. Thank you. Our next question tonight comes from Professor Ian Frazer whose research led to the development of the HPV vaccine against cervical cancer.
PROFESSOR IAN FRAZER: Mr Gates, our research and your support for vaccine programs in the developing world have encouraged us to initiate a program to help prevent and control cervical cancer in Vanuatu, a small pacific island where cervical cancer happens to be the commonest cause of death amongst women. Vanuatu have committed to continue the program when our funding support for that program ceases. However, there is clearly an expectation that the funding will continue to come from outside of the country. Are we doing things wrong? Is it morally correct to support a program which we know is going to come to an end unless there is continued outside support? And how can we make Vanuatu more responsible for looking after itself?
BILL GATES: Yeah, I think before you undertake a program it is important to look at whether there will be ongoing support for that. In the case of HPV vaccine, the good news is that GAVI is now supporting some pilot programs where they fund the availability of HPV vaccine and, with enough donor generosity, they will be able to make that a standard, the same way they have for pentavalent and they're doing for rotavirus and pneumococcus. In fact the next big vaccine they want to add to that list is they get the universal coverage of those out there, HPV, and there's a lot of excitement. Now, it's tricky because you have to give it a different age than the normal vaccination program, but the pilot programs are to look at can you do that through the schools, how do you get people together? We've done pilots in India, which was actually a good thing that we learned from. So I think there is some very good plans to bring the prices down and to have this GAVI financing come in for the countries that want to get serious about HPV, moving towards a goal that this should be universally available.
TONY JONES: Briefly back to Ian, are you concerned that some forms of aid are creating dependency?
VANUATU
PROFESSOR IAN FRAZER: It's not so much that they create dependency as that they create an expectation in the population that is difficult then to meet. The GAVI price for the HPV vaccine is still $5 a dose and in Vanuatu, which is not GAVI-eligible because there is a lot of banking for Australia but still has subsistence economy, $5 a dose is still quite a lot of money?
BILL GATES: Yeah, I don't know the economics of Vanuatu, why they can't tax the banking activity to buy a $5 vaccine. It seems like you could do that but the price won't stay at $5. You know, there are different manufacturers are going to come in and bring it down. Sadly the price will come down partly because penetration of rich world hasn't gone up as quickly as was hoped for. So there's still a lot of work to do on HPV, including getting those new entrants in that we are financing some of that
TONY JONES: Okay. Let's move on. Our next question comes from Katherine Murray.
CORRUPT GOVERNMENTS
KATHERINE MURRAY: Mr Gates, some of the world's poorest countries are run by corrupt and often totalitarian leaders. How do you manage to support the people without supporting the governments?
BILL GATES: Well, we believe that vaccinations should take place in every country. No matter what you think of the leader in that country, the children in that country deserve vaccines. So we've even been involved in helping get vaccines into North Korea which, you know, it is a contest, but you might think of that as the worst political leadership in the world today. Not many would compete with that. And so we're involved in all countries. Somalia, where there is no government, Eritrea, where the government is imperfect. You name it, we're in there trying to get vaccines out to the children.
TONY JONES: And places where the workers themselves have been in danger, if not some of them killed.
BILL GATES: Well, yeah, it's very tragic that even in the case of polio in the last six months, the workers have been targeted, both in Pakistan and in Nigeria, and killed. Now, the workers have chosen to keep volunteering. New security things have been put in place. You know, the government has really taken some very good steps but, you know, those are real heroes that go out and get vaccines to children even in the face of threats against their life.
TONY JONES: Is there a particular issue with Islamist extremism in North Africa, which is becoming - and Pakistan, obviously, which is becoming a lot worse?
BILL GATES: Well, there is a group in Nigeria called Boko Haram and what they think about this isn't totally clear. In the case of Pakistan and Afghanistan, we've actually had good luck where a lot of the Taliban groups have given so called letters of passage, where they say vaccinators can come in. They need to be convinced that it's not a plot by the US Government and, you know, there were some things that confused that in terms of vaccination activities and so maintaining that fragile trust that these people are there to help your kids and that's all they're going to do, it's never very easy, but it's actually looking pretty good right now in Afghanistan and Pakistan
TONY JONES: Okay. Let's move on again. We'll talk about something that's more fun. Our next question comes from Phillipe Xander.
BETTER CONDOMS
PHILLIPE XANDER: Firstly, on behalf of the international health staff and students here today, I would like to thank you for coming. My question is since putting forward the Condom Challenge, in which you were offering $100,000 start-up funding to whoever creates a new condom that can protect and increase sexual pleasure, have there been any designs that are fulfilling expectations? And how significant of an effect do you think the new condom might have on decreasing rates of HIV and sexually transmissible infections across the globe, particularly the developing nations?
BILL GATES: Yeah, we put out some pretty interesting challenges. And I don't know the status on that one. I think people are still sending in their things. What we do is we ask you to send in - we have new toilets, ways of delivering vaccines, all sorts of places where we're seeking the best ideas and we ask people to send in a two-page application and in order to avoid committee thinking, we send them out to reviewers and usually you'll get about 20. Whichever one you think is the best, that gets funded no matter what any of the other reviewers think and then you pick your next three ones and then if that's from a poor country it's automatically funds or if it's from a rich country it takes three people to give it their second designation. So anyway we've been able to finance a lot of pretty wild ideas.
TONY JONES: How close are you to producing a better condom which produces more pleasure?
BILL GATES: I don't know. I'll have them get back to you on that.
TONY JONES: Thank you very much. The next question is from Sam Wood.
GLOBAL WARMING
SAM WOOD: Mr Gates, a topic that has not yet been broached tonight but is nevertheless one that is quite important for our world at the moment is the one of our environment. And you've said in the past that in order to stop global temperature rise, we must cut our total carbon footprint globally to zero, which would mean those in the Third World must do so as well. How do you propose to cut the carbon footprint of those who already have the bare minimum in terms of industrial technology, which even now is not enough to properly sustain them?
BILL GATES: Well, the key is not the Co2 emissions of the third world. You know, if you think of the poorest countries, they are responsible for less than 5% of the carbon emission. And when I say the poorest, I don't mean the middle income. I don't mean Brazil, Mexico, China, Indonesia. I mean the 70 that are the very poorest and so for them it's such a small percentage that they should not have imposed upon them that they have to buy more expensive energy. They are the ones who will suffer the most because it's actually tropical agriculture environments where the heating will cause the most starvation because of extreme crop failure, and so it's incumbent on the west of the world to get Co2 emissions down and it is a very urgent thing that requires us to fund innovation, to fund incentives. It is not an immediate problem, but it is a huge problem that you've got to act now to make a big difference.
TONY JONES: Yeah. There is a global fund, although it's running out of money, for health issues. Should there be a global fund for environmental issues to actually help this process?
BILL GATES: I don't think a new mechanism is what's required. The thing you want to do that has the longest lead time is you want to increase research in Energy R&D, and it's very disappointing that as people have taken money and subsidised various things that the research on things that would be very economical hasn't increased. Even the US, if you look at the balance of research and they are by far the biggest funder of energy research, like many other categories, the amount of deployment money has been almost 10 times the research money and the research has not gone up much. So I'm not sure a new mechanism is what's required.
TONY JONES: Okay. Let's move on. We have another question from Amy Kimball.
US HEALTHCARE
AMY KIMBALL: Given that your charity focuses on providing better health for citizens in foreign countries, does it frustrate you that underprivileged citizens of the United States don't have access to an affordable health care system?
BILL GATES: Yeah, well, fortunately in the US less than 1% of children under five die and that largely happens because of premature birth. And so although we have a very inequitable situation and we should certainly move towards universal health care, it's not really comparable to the situation in developing countries. That is most kids get enough nutrition that you don't have this 30 to 40% where their brains don't fully develop. So we have work to do as a country. We're kind of unique in the rich countries in terms of health care accessibility. We'd get the worse grade of all the different countries. We also manage to spend more than anybody else, so copying us may not be the best idea in this one area. But, you know, I do think the policies are moving in the right direction to give better health care. In fact, you know, for young people the chips coverage has gone up and the new Obamacare will help with that quite a bit
TONY JONES: I was going to say, did you get involved in politics to this degree: that Obamacare was hugely controversial? The Tea Party candidates basically said, "This is going to destroy the American economy and certainly the American health system." Did you get involved in politics then?
BILL GATES: Well, I think if you're, you know, a rich person with a lot of ideas you ought to be careful to pick a few ideas to kind of say that you know the answer. You know, people will get tired of listening to you if you think you have answers to too many things and so the areas I have really experienced are issues related to education, issues related to foreign aid, and so although there are exceptions, I really, when I'm back in Congress, I try to talk to things that I'm working on full-time. I know the scientists. I know the numbers and rich world health care is different enough than what I've devoted my life to that I don't go in pretending to have the solution on that
TONY JONES: Okay. Our next question is from Ben Park.
INDIGENOUS LIFE EXPECTANCY
BEN PARK: The Australian Indigenous population have a lower life expectancy of about ten years compared to non-Indigenous Australians. This can be attributed to the disadvantages they face in areas of health, education and employment. These combined factors have led to an intergenerational cycle of disadvantage for Indigenous people. How do you see the best way to break this cycle of disadvantage?
BILL GATES: Well, you know, it's interesting to think are there countries who, for their Indigenous population, has done a good job? It's another case where I wouldn't say the US has done a particularly good job. We have some strange things where you let them build casinos in some cases and then they have so much money they have the problems of having too much money and that doesn't work very broadly because the vast population of Indigenous people aren't in those weird privileged circumstances. So you know creating - bringing them into modern culture that requires certain things, having them retain their traditional values, those seem to create a bit of a paradox. I don't know examples but you should study and say, you know, did New Zealand do it well? Did parts of Europe do it well? You know, are there any examples of this? Certainly it's a worthy cause in terms of resources, creativity, smart people, are the schools fantastic in those areas? You know, why is the health care not living up? What are the diseases that are at work there? You know, what you're describing in terms of life expectancy, you know, ten years is a lot. You know, for a lot of countries, it's more like 40 years or 50 years' difference but, you know, clearly that should be worked on.
TONY JONES: Let's move on. You're watching a edition of Q&A with Bill Gates. Our next question comes from Arian Jahiri.
ROBOTS AND WAR
ARIAN JAHIRI: In an episode of The Simpsons, a character made the following quote about the future when addressing cadets: "The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots, and as you go forth today, remember always your duty is clear: to build and maintain those robots." While such a quote is supposed to be satirical, do you think one day robots doing human tasks, such as fighting wars, will become reality?
BILL GATES: Well, we already have the equivalent of robots doing a lot of things. You know, if you look at how farming was done historically and how it's done today, you know, those are mechanical devices that are helping us out a lot. If you look at what a telephone operator used to do or what a typist used to do, we are proceeding to replace all sorts of labour with robots and this is a progression that, with vision, with speech recognition, with greater mobility, will span to a lot of new areas and...
TONY JONES: Including warfare, which I think is the point that that young man just made and indeed we have drones already, these robots flying over different countries, assassinating people. The future, according to futurologists who look at robotics, could be of tiny swarms, insect-size drones, able to infiltrate people's houses and kill them. And do you think about the future? Do you think about these kind of things, how it might look?
BILL GATES: Well, today we have real insects invading people's homes. It's called malaria and it actually does kill people. So I have a strange obsession with the present. I don't see robots as something that will lead to more war. You know, we have to be careful to avoid war. In general the trend has been quite phenomenal in that regard. Violence in general, particularly of that type, less genocide - you know, there's an unbelievable book about this by Stephen Pinker that really talks about the trend and how positive it's been. But robots are a good thing. Let's just use them for something other than war.
TONY JONES: Our next question is related to that. It comes from Jessica Lee.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
JESSICA LEE: Do you ever think that artificial intelligence will ever surpass the human mind, and if so, how would humanity handle it?
BILL GATES: Well, it would be very humbling. You know, in certain respects, computers are far faster than we are today. You know, multiplying, perfect memory and it's this wonderful auxiliary tool that lets us communicate and create. The ability to simulate things, you know, try out a new car design and see how that's going to work or a new nuclear reactor, look at how you would design drugs. Computer simulation is this mind-blowing advance that will increase the rate of innovation and so, you know, I do think that when the computer takes over certain tasks, that will be tough for us. It will be a long time before you're matching the type of broad judgment that humans exercise in many different areas. So that...
TONY JONES: Well, when you were younger, you predicted that this could happen, that carbon-based life forms may not be unique. That machines could...
BILL GATES: Yeah, over time - over time the machines are going to get very smart and, you know, like all modern things, we will have to adjust to that. It is a kind of an embarrassment of riches problem, as opposed to the opposite that many people worry about in the future and so I do believe it is a solvable problem. You know, now we have to avoid climate change and other problems before we will even have this one to worry about.
TONY JONES: Sure, but do you think artificial intelligence is doable?
BILL GATES: Absolutely
TONY JONES: And how long do you think that could take?
BILL GATES: Very hard to predict. At least five times as long as Ray Kurzweil says.
TONY JONES: Okay. The next question is from Tobias Yao.
ADDICTED TO SMARTPHONES
TOBIAS YAO: Hi Bill. Thank you for answering my question. My question is: I was hoping to get your view on the constant use of smart devices by young people, excluding Microsoft products, of course, and how do you teach your kids?
BILL GATES: Well, in terms of using - you know, when does a kid get a phone? Every parent has to make that judgment. You know, when does a kid get to browse without your seeing their browsing history? That's something you can talk with your kids about. Make a decision. You know, do your kids get to go into their rooms and Skype with anyone in any way? Actually, in our household, they are allowed to do but we - there's all these different judgment calls. The main thing that comes off is a kid who is overusing the technology, some game or something like that, and actually for our kids they haven't got to the point where we've had to set limits on it. Now, they all said that every single classmate had phones years before we let them have phones and we said that was a good experience for them to go through. So, you know, we're viewed as tough parents in terms of letting the kids have stuff at a young age, and then you teach them how to use it well and, you know, expect them to use it responsibly, like anything else.
TONY JONES: Not surprisingly there's a bit of curiosity about your family and how that works. Zack Solomon has a question for us.
GATES' INHERITANCE
ZACK SOLOMON: You say you don't think it is a good thing for your children to have too much money. You're only giving them a small portion of your fortune - a paltry $10 million. That amount would be life-changing for most. Do you think that your sense of perspective has been skewed by your wealth?
BILL GATES: Absolutely. I haven't mowed the lawn for a long time. I forget what it's like. I do wash the dishes every night so there are, you know, certain rituals that are worth maintaining. You know, what you would like to do is have your kids have some freedom to pick what they want to do, but not so much freedom that they can't do something of importance, and that's a hard balance to strike. But, you know, I do think that having kids receive large sums of wealth actually has been more negative for them than positive, particularly if their friends think that, they think that. You know, I think a kid should grow up knowing that they are going to have to make their own way in terms of finding work and that, you know, they won't be giving out sums of money or just have, you know, all the money they will need, you know, and so far that philosophy has worked very well.
TONY JONES: I presume you have heard of that robot called the dishwasher? Just doesn't matter. The next question is from Andrew Asfaganov.
TECHNOLOGY CONTROLLING HUMANITY?
ANDREW ASFAGANOV: Mr Gates, information technology is becoming very integrated deeply into our lives and brings new levels of convenience at the cost of privacy. Does it worry you that this technology will be misused in the future in terms of controlling human activity?
BILL GATES: Yeah, as technology advances, there are things like privacy which we've sort of had implicitly because people weren't very good at gathering information, where society will have to think more explicitly about what are the rules. You know, if you've had a divorce trial, is that transcript generally available? If you've had tickets, should your neighbour be able to find out that you had a speeding ticket? If someone is going to hire you as a bus driver, should they be able to find out you have a speeding ticket? What should your credit card company know? How far back should that go? And these are complex questions. We'll have to make sure that they're obeyed and that the tools work that way. Even questions like should there be lots of cameras in an urban area? London has chosen to go in a direction where they have lots of cameras. It's actually worked very well for them in terms of stopping crime and improving things. Other cities, including some in the US, have been more reluctant to deploy that technology and so it is one of the drawbacks against a overwhelming set of positive things in terms of staying in touch, learning, curiosity. Privacy is one of the things we're going to have to make sure we draw the line in the right way and, you know, I think different countries will experiment with different ways of drawing it. When you get terrorists using the technology, you'll tend to say, okay, the state should be able to see a lot. Then when you get periods where that's not happening, then you'll tend to move towards individual privacy and hopefully we can find a way that we achieve both
BILL GATES: You've got time for one last question. This one comes from Andrew Zeng.
CHEATING DEATH
ANDREW ZENG: Hi, Bill. It's a great pleasure to meet you. What are your thoughts on cryonics? Is it something you have personally considered, as a few months ago on Reddit you mentioned that cheating death is on your bucket list and you are probably the most viable candidate to beat death.
TONY JONES: Cheating death is on your bucket list. Is that true?
BILL GATES: No, I'd like to live a long time but I won't have myself cryogenically preserved or cloned or anything of the kind. You know, life is a great thing but, you know, you've got to make room for the people who come after you. So I won't try and cheat death, just delay it as long as possible.
TONY JONES: Well, thank you very much for this hour of your life. That's all we have time for. Please thank our guest, Bill Gates. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. And a special thanks to the Pacific Friends of the global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and everyone here at the University of NSW, including this great audience. Give yourselves a big round of applause. You were terrific. Please join us next Monday for another Q&A in our regular 9:30 time slot. Until then, goodnight.