Interview with Katalin Novák at Sky News Australia

Now to a brilliant woman who became Hungary's youngest president and its first female president. Hungary stands alone in many respects in the EU, it has an uncompromising border protection policy, it is unashamedly Christian and there are bold policies in place to encourage women to have children and lots of them. I spoke to the President of Hungary Katalin Novák earlier today.

Joining me now is President of Hungary, Katalin Novák. 
Madam President, welcome to Australia. Right now we are seeing great upheaval in the world, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Israel's counter-offensive against Hamas terrorists. And throughout Europe, that has inspired racial and religious unrest. We've seen mass protests in London, Paris and elsewhere, how is Hungary handling these issues?

We live right now in an unstable world. Hungary is very far away from Australia, 15,000 kilometres. We are in the middle, in the heart of Europe, direct neighbours to the war-hit Ukraine, also having Hungarian ethnic minority on the territory of Ukraine. So we are really directly affected by the war in Ukraine and that is very, very sad. We would like to do our utmost in order to reach a peace as soon as possible. So we are interested in negotiations, peace talks and then peace as soon as possible. And of course we are very worried for the situation in Israel and we are very supportive for Israel, me personally also.

Your country shares a border with Ukraine. How is the war with Russia progressing and do you see an end to the conflict in sight?

Unfortunately, not for now. The war is a tragedy on a daily basis, on both sides they are losing lives and the Ukrainians are also losing a lot of lives every single day. So unfortunately, the war is going very slowly and doesn't seem to end in the near future. We condemn the invasion of Ukraine and we condemn the aggression of Russia and we provide humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. That means that since the outbreak of the war, two million people crossed the Hungarian borders due to this war conflict. And most of them didn't stay in Hungary, but we do provide humanitarian aid to them. So the problem is right now that we don't see how we will proceed to peace negotiations and peace at the end of the day which would be the ultimate purpose of all of us.

Now despite providing enormous aid, humanitarian aid to Ukrainians fleeing, Hungary has still attracted a great deal of criticism from left-leaning politicians and media for its immigration policy. The EU's Top Court has reprimanded Hungary over its migration policies, specifically the outsourcing of asylum applications. Can you tell me what the philosophy is behind your country's tough border protection policies?

We are speaking in Australia where you introduced the Stop the Boats policy which proved to be very successful. In Hungary, we don't have any sea entrance. We are a landlocked country surrounded by seven neighbours. But we have a very strong pressure from our southern borders. We are protecting actually the external borders of the European Union, of the Schengen zone. So that means that Hungary is not only protecting its own borders, but also that of the European Union. And for that reason, we have to somehow stand against this big pressure from our southern borders through the Balkan route for the immigrants. So that's one thing that we have to protect our borders. I think a country is as strong as it can support its land, its borders, it is a must for each and every country to be able to decide on who to let in and who not to. So that is decisive for each and every country, so as for Hungary. Also, there is another aspect. We have quite challenging demographic situation as most of the welfare countries or the well-developed Western type of countries. And we don't want to tackle this demographic issue by putting the emphasis on immigration. We'd rather emphasize the importance of childbearing and family support. So we would like to enable Hungarian couples to have as many children as they want to in the moment when they want to have them without any financial disadvantages.

Well, your country's pro-family policies are just astonishing, fascinating, so different to what we have here. Women who have four children or more will not pay any income tax for life, explain the policy to me and the impact it's had.

For us, family is a core value. Our society is based on strong families. And we see how many financial burdens young couple face when it's about housing, when it's about parenting, when it's about having more children. So we would like to just somehow decrease these financial disadvantages and really enable childbearing in Hungary. So for that reason, they have a pro-family tax policy. The more children you have, the less personal income tax you pay in Hungary. And once you have at least four children as a mother, then you don't pay any personal income tax ever in your life. But for example, if you go to university and you have a student loan that later on when you will have children as a mother, then we will decrease or totally write off your student loan depending on the number of children you have. 
Or for example, we have grandparental leave in Hungary. That means that the grandparents who are still active can stay at home with the grandchildren when both parents are active and don't have the chance to do so. So what we would like to do is to create a really free environment for families and for childbearing, not any single family is the same as the other one. So in each and every family you have to find your own solutions. There are also single parented families. We also support them because they have double burdens, so we would like them also to thrive. Once a child is born no matter where in the world, once it's about a Hungarian child, we try to reach out to the family and support the family life. We spend, or I would rather use the word or the expression, we invest more than 6% of our GDP for family support which is the highest percentage worldwide. We also see some consequences because the number of marriages in Hungary doubled in 10 years. The fertility rate rose by 25%, it's the highest increase. And if I for example compare it to Australia where we saw a huge increase in the early years of the 2000s. After 2000, 2002 and 2006, if I remember well, then you had an increase in your fertility rate and you also reached above two. But then it started to drop and it's in Australia, it's also very worrisome, just as in all of our countries.

Wow, it's just fascinating. What do you think we can learn from Hungary? You've spent a few days now in Australia. Is that an area where we could learn from Hungary, the pro-family policies?

We could learn from each other. I think we can also learn from Australia the way you are so positively reactive to what is happening around you and so calm and so peaceful and I think it is for me also a great experience to see how nice and friendly Australian people are, not only with us, with me personally of course, but with the almost 100,000 Hungarians who live here in Australia and I would also like to thank all Australians for the hospitality and welcoming how they received these 100,000 Hungarians who had to leave their countries for different reason in the last 200 years. I think that is also something that we can learn from you.

What we can maybe show as an example, this family orientation that we would like to have not only good family policy schemes financially, but also a family-friendly environment in Hungary, a family friendly mindset. And that means that each and every person and each and every couple should be able to take his or their own decisions about childbearing, if to have children, when to have children, how many children to have. But having children should necessarily mean a disadvantage for anybody. That is something that we put in the hard core of our policies and that is I think something that maybe our countries could also work for.

Now finally, we're likely to see another Biden v. Trump race for the US President in 2024, how do you see that race? Seemed like President Donald Trump had a soft spot for Hungary during his four years.

For us Hungary, it is very important that nobody intervenes in our internal policies. We are a sovereign country, we are a sovereign nation, we are sovereign people and we are very proud of our thousand-year-old history and our sovereignty as well. So for us, the US foreign policy is good if it's not about intervening in anybody other's life or any other country's life. So for us, the US foreign policy, which we stand for, is that they let's say leave us alone from that perspective and that was characteristic to some presidents and that is not characteristics for some others. I don't want to go into any more details, but I think exporting democracy the way that sometimes the US tries to do is not the best solution.