Hockey: Not Your Average Joe

by Madonna King

  That person was Tony Abbott, Joe’s fellow alumni from The University of Sydney, fellow Jesuit, fellow Howard government frontbencher and someone well defined in the public mind. Abbott had always been a values politician. He wore his Catholicism on his sleeve, was an arch-conservative and presented an almost frightening persona, so much so that he was universally known as the ‘Mad Monk’. Joe was every bit as much a Liberal as Abbott, every bit as committed to Liberal causes as Abbott, but there was no doubt that Abbott behaved as Captain Conservative while Joe behaved as the reasonable man in the middle.

  As much as Sunrise had boosted Joe’s profile, it also ran the risk of putting a cap on his ambitions unless he could do better to define himself to voters and Party members who wanted a leader to stand for something; to not just be a master of the soundbite. In a process that he began on the eve of the 2009 leadership battle, and escalated the following year, Joe emerged with a new determination – approaching his portfolio with renewed vigour and inspired to address some of the perceptions that he saw unfold during the leadership debate about the breadth of his philosophical foundation in politics. His headland speeches – on liberty and youth, enterprise and the age of entitlement – were aimed at illuminating those political motivations that drove Joe in politics. The speeches were aimed at ensuring that people knew where Joe came from, and where he was headed. Voters had a gut instinct of where Abbott and Howard sat in the body politic. Not so with Joe.

  The political environment heading into 2010 was the most volatile it had been since 1975. It seemed that almost each day a new headline would herald a new drama, as the government fought for space. In April, Rudd, as prime minister, deferred the commencement of the proposed CPRS, the following month he announced the government would tax the super profits of the mining industry, and in June he was deposed in a leadership spill by Julia Gillard. The following month, she announced changes to the Resource Super Profits Tax (later known as the Mineral Resource Rent Tax), and a month later a federal election ended in a hung parliament. A changed media landscape meant politicians were acting in a 24-hour news cycle, a giddy delivery of news that added to the bedlam. It was a trend that would continue over the next couple of years, as the parties waged a battle over asylum seeker policy, as well as the carbon price scheme that was introduced in July 2012 – a few months after another attempt to white-ant Gillard left her national leadership fragile. It was into that mix, that Joe determined he would answer the question: ‘What does Joe Hockey stand for?’

  Tony Pearson acts and looks a bit like you would expect a banker to act and look. Serious. Fairly monosyllabic. Thinks before he speaks. Puts everything in some sort of context. And, first as the Opposition treasury’s director of policy and then, after the 2010 election, as chief-of-staff to the Opposition treasurer – that’s what he wanted his boss to mirror: a good solid banker. Pearson was from the banking and finance world, having had big gigs at both the ANZ and the Reserve Bank, before being lured to work for Joe. But as a senior staffer in his office, even before the important chief-of-staff role, he anguished over the public image Joe had. ‘The way I think about MPs in general and Joe in particular is that he is the rock star and we are the management, particularly the chief-of-staff. You’ve got to manage him like a talent,’ he says. Pearson knew that voters wanted their treasurer to be reliable and credible, just like their own banker. Even a bit boring perhaps. He tested his view each time he interviewed someone for a job in the office. ‘I’d say to them, you want to work for Joe – what’s his image? Sometimes they’d say negative things – early on they would say he’s a nice guy, he’s well-liked, a man of the people, possibly laid-back, a bit lackadaisical, a bit happy-go-lucky. I’d say, if you were advising him, what would you do? It wasn’t Joe’s stance on an issue that was the subject of conjecture; it was how he came across.’

  Three issues rose on the presentation front, with his weight being the chief one. Although Joe had climbed Kokoda and Mount Kilimanjaro, the 12-hour days required of his political work would exhaust him with his big bulky frame letting him down. So was his propensity to sweat. While make-up was used under the heavy hot television spotlights or in a packed media scrum, the sweat would still build on his face before beginning the trickle down his neck. That annoyed him, but it also made him look as though he was nervous, or not being wholly candid. Staff wondered whether his size contributed to that, but no-one was going to say that to his face. The third issue was less obvious during media scrums, but very noticeable in set speeches. He seemed to huff and puff, breathing erratically. Joe put it down to a childhood of asthma. Others thought he would benefit from speech lessons, not unlike those he was dragged along to by his sister as a youngster. On Andrew Burnes’s recommendation, an expert in delivery was brought in to assess his speech patterns, and help him control his breathing. To Joe, it was all a bit airy-fairy and while he entertained it at the request of those around him, it was a fleeting relationship.

  Joe knew that the public perception of him as the big, jovial Armenian Santa Claus had to change, particularly if he was to be treasurer, and possibly prime minister one day. He needed to look different, feel better, and lose the media appearances that were all fun and no substance. He had to get serious, and he began the journey just before his leadership bid and worked on it right through Opposition until government was wrested off Labor in 2013.

  Joe changed in many ways. He’d been happy to cruise along in 2009, allowing Party members to try and rope him into the leadership, but after the loss, which he found humiliating, his confidence took a pounding. In parlance once used in Melissa’s athletic world, he had been picked for the team, only to be benched before he got the chance to show his talent on-field. His Party had sought him out, and then stopped him getting across the line. As well as chipping at his confidence, that made him stop and reflect. ‘That’s when he really thought, I want to, be prime minister,’ one senior staffer says.

  That seminal moment led to a change of attitude for Joe, too. He had always considered himself as being across his work, despite the ‘Sloppy Joe’ moniker, and John Howard says he never saw otherwise. Peta Credlin, Abbott’s chief-of-staff, agrees, saying the ‘Sloppy Joe’ tag would never have been directed at a woman ‘They [Labor] were trying to fit Joe up for being big and lazy and not across his brief. I think people might have underestimated his actual intellect.’

  Joe now needed to be seen as being across his brief. He stopped delegating as much and did more himself, sitting with a red pen and going through speech drafts and writing over them for hours at a time. He became more careful with his words; instead of attacking the banks, he’d attack the treasurer over the banks. Semantics perhaps, but it was also clinically strategic, and gradual. There were to be no more appearances in a tutu, but he still accepted invitations to appear on The Project on Channel Ten.

  He brawled with himself over any mistakes he made, such as a poor performance attacking the 2010–11 Budget, when previously he would have moved on quickly. He even called former prime minister Paul Keating, made an appointment at his Potts Point office, and asked him about competition policy and getting states onside. Joe mended a few fences along the way, including with his now good friend and member for Moncrieff Steven Ciobo, with whom he had fallen out over conflicting views on the access card.

  ‘Avuncular Joe was never going to cut the mustard if he was going to be leader of the Liberal Party,’ Christopher Pyne says. ‘I think it dawned on him in Opposition that there just wasn’t any support anymore. There’s no department and there’s hardly any staff. If you’re going to make it you have to make it on your own. But after we had been in Opposition for a few years and then lost again in 2010, he shook off the “woe is me” routine. He decided in the last term that if one day I’m going to be the leader I’m going to have to toughen up.’ That transformation – from jocular Joe who always said ‘yes’ to the unsmiling face demanding an end to entitlement – was helped by his opposite number Way
ne Swan. Joe likes most people, but he couldn’t cop Wayne Swan; he was desperate to knock him off, and that fed a killer instinct.

  Joe had come to the Liberal Party after impressing its NSW elders with his performance as an Independent at Sydney University. He had decided to pursue a political career within the Party after giving himself a crash course in political philosophy. His maiden speech to parliament in 1996 drew on some of that reading, in particular what he described as three principles of modern liberalism – recognition of the rights of the individual, belief in parliamentary democracy and a commitment to improve society through reform. His definition drew on the work of 18th-century philosophers John Locke, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. Joe told parliament:

  Liberalism has traditionally steered a course between the extremism of the far Left and the reactionary conservatism of the far Right. Liberalism is most comfortable when it is developing new ideas and setting new goals. It encourages us to nurture expression in areas like the theatre, music, dance and cinema. It encourages us to excel in sport through better training techniques and improved fitness. It encourages us to succeed in business with better work practices and innovative products. Liberalism has a reformist zeal: to reach higher, to move faster and to grow stronger. This will deliver a society that the greatest Australian Liberal, Sir Robert Menzies, described as a nation of lifters and not leaners.

  On a more practical level, Joe’s first speech to parliament also cited his father’s immigrant past and the importance of that influence on him, and issued a challenge to the community to improve on its treatment of women. ‘We should abandon the politically correct platitudes about equality and honestly acknowledge that there remain entrenched societal and institutional impediments to women’s equal and active participation in either or both the home and work communities,’ he said. Like almost all those who went before him, Joe’s maiden speech went largely unnoticed – particularly given the queue of those who were lined up to deliver their first address to parliament in the class of 1996. But even so, Joe had written into history the reasons he sought election. He had pinned his philosophical colours to a mast then and it was those values that he looked to now to define his future.

  By the time of Joe’s leadership bid, it was time to move from the practicalities of politics – the necessary fixes that had been part of his ministerial career and the salesmanship that had made him one of the nation’s most recognised and liked politicians – to some exploration of why politics mattered and what sort of society it should service. This was Joe’s idea; he wanted to place markers down outside the traditional Treasury policy remit. And thus began a three-year campaign to spell out what he stood for and what he thought his party and the nation should stand for.

  At one level he was engaged in a destructive and gladiatorial contest with the government; on another, he was waging a constructive personal journey of ideas. The campaign to sell who he was and what he stood for culminated with a speech in London, calling for ‘The End of the Age of Entitlement’ (this same theme would resurface ahead of the 2014 Budget), but began at the Sydney Institute in November 2009 with a speech entitled ‘In Defence of God’.

  In that speech, Joe spelt out the value of faith of any sort. ‘The struggle to find meaning in our lives is one that is essentially individual and universal. It is also timeless,’ the shadow treasurer told the conservative think-tank. And he left no doubt about the link between belief and politics. ‘Many parliamentarians, if not most, will form judgments based on their faith and the values that flow from their beliefs. It is unrealistic to expect that any person can neatly quarantine their faith from their judgment, just as it would be unrealistic to expect a person to strip bare their decision-making from the weight of their life experiences.’

  Lamenting the decline of faith, he warned of its worth as a stable reference point. ‘The human side of religion is exemplified by those who dedicate their lives to helping others. They often provide us with life inspiration. In the past that inspiration has often come from the works of the saints, the mystics, the prophets and in the case of my faith, from the teaching and example of Jesus Christ.’ Drawing the questions of faith back to the practical issues of governing, he said:

  … If I reflect on society today, the stage on which such inspirational figures play is becoming crowded with new characters devoid of values. They do not encourage us to reflect on how we can make our own lives or those of others better. The cult of personality is not new. However, I question the example that is set by the celebrities whose only achievement is a brand of perfume or a reality program on Foxtel. I wonder if when such people become our role models are we in fact just diminishing ourselves.

  From time to time in politics we see a similar cult of personality. Politics attracts people who can lead and inspire. However, for much of the history of Western democracy, the values and policies of politicians have been as important as the personalities of their proponents. Maybe it’s a result of convergence in mainstream political beliefs – the absence of the great philosophical divide that once dominated our politics, or maybe it’s the nature of mass communications today – but the trend that I see in politics is one where personality is winning over the substance that should be at the heart of political life. The danger is that we manufacture politicians in the same way that celebrities can be created. Too many politicians seek to portray an image of something other than themselves. Image is about spin and media management and not about the real person – warts and all.

  We should not be afraid to be real. We would do well to avoid confection. In short, no leader should pretend to be something they are not.

  By March 2010, when he embarked on his next marker speech, it would be clear that no-one in the future would doubt what Joe Hockey stood for.

  Joe knew the leadership could have been his, but now belonged to Tony Abbott, who was looking strong and decisive. The consequence of his earlier wishy-washy position was seen by many inside and outside the party as soft, lacking the hardness of principle that would give conservative politics the leader it wanted. Joe was determined to ensure he was not pretending to be something he wasn’t. But in the ensuing series of speeches he took the chance to spell out who he was – warts and all. Not just a conservative politician with an avuncular manner but a national leader with flesh on the bones of his political thinking. First, it was ‘ln Defence of Liberty’ to the Grattan Institute in Melbourne. Then, a month later ‘In Defence of Enterprise’ to the Labor-leaning Eidos Institute, before heading back to the Sydney Institute for ‘In Defence of Opportunity’. ‘In Defence of Youth’ was presented at the University of New England’s Earle Page College. They were all marked ‘in defence of’ because Joe felt the ideas he was pursuing were under attack. He wanted to be seen as defending them.

  Joe then broadened the brief with speeches on ‘Australia’s Future Engagement in the Asian Century’ in October 2011, ‘The Future of Free Markets, Global Trade and Commerce’ in December 2011 and, finally, the speech that really got noticed, ‘The End of The Age of Entitlement’ to the Institute of Economic Affairs in London in April 2012. The origins of this speech are interesting. Travelling earlier with Andrew Burnes, Joe had talked about the amount of waste across Europe. ‘You should do something on the Age of Entitlement,’ Burnes told him. Joe jumped on it. That was exactly right. He should. Burnes didn’t let up either, later sending through some notes hoping Joe would find them useful.

  Each of Joe’s marker speeches drew on the principles he’d outlined in his maiden speech a decade and a half earlier, promoting the principles of what he saw as liberalism. In ‘Defending Enterprise’, Joe tied support for liberty and free enterprise.

  It always intrigues me that there are so many on the Left of politics who argue for civil and political rights while, at the same time, seeking to diminish individual economic rights and the role of our free enterprise system. Similarly, there are some on the Right who argue forcefully for capitalism but yet would happi
ly see the state intervene in matters of personal morality and values. Both approaches contain fundamental contradictions. The hypocrisy is palpable.

  He outlined six priorities that needed to be satisfied in modern enterprise. They were: reward for risk; encouragement of innovation; a free and fair market; delivery of promises; stability; and availability of capital.

  In defending opportunity, Joe returned to a theme he had raised first in his maiden speech, the inequality of women, particularly in corporate life. ‘The fact that just over 11 per cent of board members of ASX200 companies are female is simply disgraceful … Women hold just 2 per cent of chief executive positions and 5.9 per cent of executive line management positions – a number that has shamefully declined rather than improved over recent years,’ he said. Recognising some advances, he lamented that they were too slow in achieving anywhere near a balance.

  There are many that are reluctant to embrace gender quotas. My view is that quotas must be a last resort. However, after arguing the case for better corporate governance and gender equity for more than a decade, with little success, we are now approaching the last resort. Such is the depth and severity of the problem that there is an overwhelming case for the Australian government to set a target for gender balance for the boards of publicly listed companies.

  In this speech, Joe started to canvass reforms that would take on greater meaning a year later when he spoke on The End of the Age of Entitlement. In particular, he focused on welfare as an impediment to opportunity.

  How do we judge whether social security is providing a genuine safety net for those in need rather than a net of entanglement from which there is no escape? How can our $116 billion a year welfare system give Australians opportunity? My greatest concern is to ensure that our welfare system does not create long-term or intergenerational dependency for those able to participate in work. A system that encourages reliance on welfare is an addiction that becomes difficult to escape.