by Madonna King
‘I thought I could make a point of this, or I could just ring him.’ Joe went for the latter. Bob appreciated it, and asked him over. They started talking, then playing golf, and socialising at each other’s home. ‘I just love him,’ Joe says. The feeling is mutual.
‘While he’s on the opposite side of the fence to me I often joke with him that I think he’s really right-wing Labor,’ Hawke says. ‘I’ve kidded him, saying I think I’ll run against him. His response is, “Bob, they love you but they wouldn’t vote for you.” ’ Both have common political traits, particularly the lack of stuffiness or remoteness.
‘We both get genuine enjoyment out of moving around and meeting people,’ Hawke says.
Their friendship isn’t hidden; it’s just not too public. But Joe and many on Labor’s side would prove to be wrong over the Godwin Grech affair. It wasn’t Rudd who would be knocked off his perch by Utegate, as it became known. The whole saga turned on Turnbull after it was revealed evidence central to his claim had been fake. That wasn’t the reason he lost the leadership, but it didn’t help. The real game-changer in sending Turnbull packing was the government’s emission’s trading scheme, the same scheme that would both give Joe a tilt at the Party’s leadership and teach him the biggest lesson politics has to offer.
SIXTEEN
JOE WAS ON his knees, scraping the scree from the top of the mountain. He couldn’t feel his hands, the five layers of clothing needed at this temperature providing a barrier between his fingers and the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest free-standing mountain in the world. The climb to 5895 metres had been harder than anything Joe had ever done, especially the last six hours, which had begun at 1 a.m. Now at the top, he knew what he wanted to do. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a photograph. Brian Freeman, who was watching his charge carefully, didn’t say anything. The other climbers were 60 metres away, in their own thoughts, and preparing for the descent. The air is thin up on the mountain, and breathing becomes difficult. Joe looked at the ultrasound in his hands, wiped away rogue tears, and then buried it atop Mount Kilimanjaro. ‘You are starting life at the top of the mountain, my boy,’ Joe said aloud. Brian couldn’t hear every word, but saw the emotion that had enveloped Joe. Whatever he had just done meant the world to him, Brian thought. Joe then stood up, and together they walked back to the group of climbers, without saying a word.
The ultrasound was of his soon-to-be-born son Ignatius Theodore, the third child he and Melissa would welcome into the world after the heartbreak of losing another. Melissa had experienced a miscarriage, and doctors had warned her that, at 43 and with two toddlers, she would not have another child. Anyone who knows Melissa knows that is a mistake. ‘No-one tells me I can’t do this,’ she told Joe as she left the doctor’s office.
From the time Ignatius, or Iggy, was conceived Joe knew he would be their little miracle, courtesy of a big painting that hung in their lounge room. The artwork, an oil on canvas by 19th-century English painter William Bromley, is titled Rest By The Way. It shows a woman, with a boy and a girl. In a certain light you could almost make out two other figures in the background, of another man and woman. Joe had taken it to be restored and once it was cleaned up, he believed it would perfectly mirror his family – Joe, Melissa and their toddlers, Xavier and Adelaide. They had the perfect pair, and the artwork in some symbolic way proved that. But when Joe went to pick up the restored painting he saw that the two figures were in fact carrying an infant baby. He stared at it, knowing the news that Melissa would deliver on his arrival home – she was expecting another child. The artwork, showing three children, still takes pride of place in the family home, an incredible and unnerving proof that Ignatius Theodore Babbage Hockey would make it into the world on 19 October 2009.
But it had been someone else’s child, one Joe would never meet, that was the impetus for the plan to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. The previous year, in May 2008, Joe had attended a fundraising dinner for the Humpty Dumpty organisation, a charity that raises money for medical equipment needed to treat children in hospital. Joe sat at a table beside Melissa, as a nurse from rural NSW told the room about a three-year-old boy who had died because the local hospital didn’t have a piece of equipment called the EZ-IO. In layman’s terms, it’s a drill-type instrument that is used to administer medicine when children are traumatised. Children’s veins can collapse, making it difficult to direct medicine into the blood. This instrument allows the medic to drill into the shin bone and administer the medication.
The nurse had asked Paul Francis, founder and executive chair of the Humpty Dumpty organisation, whether she could speak on the night. ‘She said to me it will never ever happen on her watch again. She said we need this piece of equipment.’ At the dinner, as the heartbreaking story of the unnecessary death of a three-year-old reverberated around the room, Sydney’s well-heeled fell silent before a show of real generosity. Funds for twenty machines, each costing about $1500 each, were raised in a couple of hours.
Joe sat at his seat as bewildered as everyone else. ‘I was angry and upset. I thought, I’ve distributed tens of millions of dollars, looked after Medicare and done all of this. How on God’s earth can this happen in the 21st century?’
He turned to David Koch, who was sitting on the other side of him. ‘We’ve got to do something,’ he said. Former star rugby union player Phil Kearns was there, too. Joe had another glass of red. ‘This can’t happen again in Australia,’ he said, thumping the table. David Koch suggested another Kokoda trek. What about Kilimanjaro? Joe asked. ‘Kearnsey said I don’t climb mountains and I said fuck it, I’m going to do it,’ Joe says. He asked Melissa what she thought, before walking up to Paul Francis and asking whether he could take the microphone off MC Ray Martin. ‘I thought, oh no, another politician needing a microphone,’ Francis says.
‘We’ve got to raise the money so every hospital has one,’ he appealed to the audience. ‘I’m going to climb Kilimanjaro. Who’s in?’ Paul Francis looked out into the audience as, one by one, more than 20 people raised their hands. Joe told them they had to raise $50,000 each to do it, an easy task for him after he pitted John Singleton and Gerry Harvey against each other as donors. (‘He rings and it costs me 50 grand,’ Singo jokes.) But by night’s end, a plan had been hatched to climb the world’s highest freestanding mountain the following year, a plan that would raise $1.6 million for the Humpty Dumpty organisation. It was a year after the climb, in 2010, when the same nurse sought Joe out, telling him he had saved a child’s life because of a machine that was purchased with that fundraising. ‘Outside the birth of my children, that was the best moment of my life,’ he says. All up, 200 machines have now been bought for hospitals across Australia.
Brian Freeman, who had led the Kokoda Track tour for the Sunrise team a few years earlier saw in the newspaper that Joe now had his sights set on Mount Kilimanjaro. He was more than a bit worried. Kilimanjaro is marketed as a non-technical climb, and that annoys Freeman no end. It is close to 6000 metres, an extreme mountaineering experience, and makes people susceptible to acute mountain sickness, especially pulmonary and cerebral oedema. Thirty Europeans die each year on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. What’s more, it rises high above Tanzania, a third-world country with no medical protocol or procedures. You had to fend for yourself if something happened. Freeman decided to tender for the job, and he won it, leading the cast of fundraisers the following year. David Koch joined in, along with Andrew Burnes, Paul Francis and more than a dozen others who had committed to Joe’s public appeal the previous year.
In July 2009, the group flew to Johannesburg, and then to Dar Es Salaam, eventually making their way to Arusha, near the mountain. The 20 climbers joined 120 local porters and guides, two doctors and several medics, for the six-night/seven-day trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. First stop was Machame Camp at 3000 metres where Joe and Andrew Burnes shared a tent. They both weighed in at 135–140 kilograms, but considered themselves reasonably fit. That didn’t stop the st
omach bug that latched onto Joe for the first few days. With layers of clothing, it made the climb’s first couple of days uncomfortable, to say the least. A smaller climb filled day two, and they slept at Shira Camp at 3840 metres, before setting off on day three to reach Barranco Camp at 3950 metres. That was on Sunday 2 August, Joe’s 44th birthday, and porters were sent back to base to get a cake. By the time it arrived it was late, and the mountain climb the next day had meant people were itching to get back to their tents. The celebration was quick, and the climb resumed hours later.
The days were long, and they could feel the air thin out as they each moved along in their own thoughts. At Kokoda, it was fuel in, fuel out, one step after another. Here it was different; altitude is a strange beast. ‘Kokoda is an eight out of ten physical effort every day,’ Freeman says. ‘Kili is a five out of ten for the first six days and 11 out of ten on your summit day.’
Freeman believes climbers come back better people because of the quietude they experience on the mountain. Often, people atop the career ladder make the climb. At home, they rarely have time for themselves. The trek can force them to think about their priorities.
‘There are no silver medals,’ Joe told himself repeatedly during those long slow steps. ‘You get there or you don’t.’
A couple of days later, they all woke at Barafu camp at midnight, ready for the final full-moon climb to Uhuru peak. An elfin supply of air made sleep elusive. David Koch had made this journey previously, but it was no easier the second time. The night before, they had all been given a letter from someone in their family. Joe read one penned by Melissa, who told him how proud she was of him, and cried. Xavier had added a drawing for good measure. Everyone else on the climb had the same reaction and they had all retired, with emotions running high.
Now, just after midnight, Joe felt the ultrasound photograph in his pocket, and went outside to make the final climb to the peak. In a spontaneous pre-walk speech, Joe turned to the group. ‘We started climbing this mountain well before we even came to Tanzania,’ he said. He quoted the great words of Teddy Roosevelt: ‘Far better to dream mighty things, to seek glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than be amongst those poor souls who need suffer much or enjoy much because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.’
There were a couple of rogue words in the quote, but it did wonders for the spirits of those standing around. ‘It was sensational,’ Freeman says. Paul Francis agrees. And with that, they started the seven-hour climb to the summit, the riskiest part of the climb.
‘I didn’t know that he was carrying a picture,’ Freeman says. ‘I was checking on some people and starting to send people down. Joe kind of tapped me and asked me to come with him. We went off beyond the peak and you could see the big crater of Mount Kili on the right.’ They were standing in some light volcanic ash, and Joe took the photograph out from a pocket inside his coat. He knelt down, without saying a word. Brian didn’t know what was happening, but he knew it was important to Joe. ‘I just knelt down beside him. That’s when he started scraping the scree away. We were both on our hands and knees.’
Joe buried the ultrasound. David Koch looked across and saw Joe on his knees. He knew climbers could suffer delirium. ‘I was a bit worried about him,’ he says. But Joe soon rejoined the group, and briefly explained his short tribute to his unborn son. ‘That for me, in all the time I’ve known Joe, is probably the most poignant reflection of him as a human being,’ Koch says.
Once back on home soil, with the achievement of having climbed the highest free-standing mountain in the world, it didn’t take long for Joe to settle back into political life. Only a few short months later he would, for the first time, make a play to climb another mountain – and lead his own Party.
SEVENTEEN
JOE WOKE ON an unusually cool December 2009 morning ready to take over the reins of the Liberal Party. His mind was still reeling from the previous evening’s events, a circus ride of negotiation, deliberation and discussion. He dressed and headed off to parliament for a vote that would end Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership of the Party and write the MP for North Sydney into the nation’s history books. He had been a reluctant candidate, but if he had stopped to consider the events of the past year, this next step seemed inevitable.
The lead-up to this day had been tumultuous, but even so, Joe was warming to the idea of becoming the new Liberal leader, Opposition leader and alternative prime minister. To script, a spill vote was carried and the job of federal Liberal leader was open. He would now stand against Tony Abbott, and expected to walk out of the room as leader. MPs in his own Party – those now about to vote – had consistently told him that is what they wanted. The public seemed to want it also; the latest Newspoll showing voters believed Hockey was the best person to lead the Party. Sitting at 33 per cent, he was clear of Turnbull at 30 per cent and Abbott at just 19 per cent.
As nominations were called, Joe stood up, followed by Abbott. A sense of expectation filled the room. Everything was going to plan. Joe knew he had the numbers to beat Abbott, and in a few moments he would be voted in as the Party’s new leader. But then, almost as if in slow motion, the script started to change. Turnbull stood up, joining both Abbott and Joe, who looked shocked. ‘He looked across the room at me, and smiled,’ Joe says. For a moment, Joe was stunned; he had left a conversation with Turnbull believing that if a spill motion was carried, Turnbull would not put up his hand in the ensuing ballot. That was the also the view of Joe’s supporters. But while Joe was rocked by Turnbull throwing his hat in the ring, he didn’t think, for a moment, he would garner sufficient support to warrant any change of plans. ‘We thought, this is going to be humiliating for him,’ Joe says.
Others agree. ‘Thinking Malcolm was in for the chop, several people voted for him so that he wasn’t humiliated,’ one MP says. A vote was taken, and Joe received 23 votes. Abbott received 35, and Turnbull’s tally reached 26. Joe was excluded from the second round where Abbott defeated Turnbull 42 to 41, installing him as Liberal Party leader. One unnamed MP voted informally. Joe felt humiliated. He had been out-played in politics, his favourite game.
Across the room, jaws dropped. Abbott was quick to speak, telling his colleagues that he felt ‘humbled and daunted’ by his elevation to the top job. Senator Nick Minchin, one of the Party’s elder statesmen, who had been encouraging and cajoling Joe to run, walked over to him. ‘If I’d known this was going to happen I would have swung ten votes behind you, to get you ahead of Malcolm,’ he said. Much later, Joe found himself walking with Turnbull and his wife, Lucy, to their plane at the Canberra airport. ‘I was filthy,’ he says. ‘But I was a bit relieved, too. I thought, we are going through all these people. We’re clearing the decks. Abbott won’t last long and at least that gives me a free run. I’m next, and if I’m next, I’m not going to have all these people undermining me.’
That Tuesday 1 December 2009 carried a litany of lessons for Joe, not least how Abbott, to whom he has grown closer since then, would own the position and eventually, in September 2013, lead the Party to victory. But the other more immediate lessons revolved around numbers and trust – the former he had too few of, and perhaps too much of the latter. Despite Joe intervening on several occasions when Turnbull’s volatile leadership would target someone, their relationship had always been warm. Joe helped him get pre-selected, supported his promotion, and willed him to succeed.
‘Joe always starts off very trusting with people – in my opinion sometimes too trusting,’ Melissa says, ‘That’s with everyone. His starting position is always positive. But after the leadership thing, that really annoyed Joe and he won’t trust Malcolm again.’
The basis for that is an agreement Joe says he had with Turnbull that the outgoing leader would not stand for the leadership if a spill motion was successful. His decision to do that had wrong-footed Joe, split the moderate vote, and handed the leadership to Abbott.
In fairness, Turnbull
recalls events differently. ‘I can’t speak to what he thought and it was a very confusing and difficult period,’ Turnbull says. ‘Emotions were running very high. The fog of war was very heavy but the fact is – and the record shows – that I said publicly that I was going to stand.’ That is correct. Two days earlier, on 29 November, Turnbull gave an interview to Laurie Oakes of the Nine Network. Turnbull confirmed he was running and stipulated that he felt everyone in the Party room should have a say.
By Joe’s account, it was the day after this interview, when Joe had decided to contest the leadership, that Turnbull told him that if he lost a spill motion, he would not run against him in the leadership vote that followed. Turnbull disagrees, saying, ‘… the Sunday before the ballot I said I would stand. Why would anyone imagine that I would then do something different?’
It was only a few days earlier, sitting around his pool with Melissa and their five-week-old son, Ignatius, that Joe really believed he might run. His name had been raised over and over, and with polls bestowing on him strong community support, he’d believed it was his for the taking from the moment Turnbull had wrong-footed himself on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). It was a silly error, and Turnbull should have acknowledged that the shadow Cabinet position on the CPRS had not won the support of the Coalition Party room. His refusal to acknowledge the view of others in his Party had infuriated MPs and the Party was tearing itself to shreds; its base wound up by Alan Jones and commercial radio talkback.
Kevin Rudd had proposed an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which Turnbull supported, against the tide of many on the conservative side. Joe says Turnbull knew his leadership couldn’t survive, but wanted to drive his ETS position through the Party, and had then promised to hand the leadership to him. ‘Malcolm said to me you will take over,’ Joe says. ‘Let me get this through. He was playing with dates for a leadership ballot.’