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No ordinary bloke: Joe Hockey
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Angus Fontaine, Sunday Life
April 1, 2009 - 4:20PM
He climbs mountains, rescues cats, raises money for a children's charity - and still Joe Hockey finds time to be a politician. Angus Fontaine meets the man with the prime minister (and his job) in his sights.
Hare Krishna! Krishna! Krishna!" The soundtrack to Joe Hockey's arrival is surreal. But no more than the means: a bright-yellow Mini Minor on loan from his wife. It zips into the Hunters Hill Hotel car park and he rolls out. It's like watching a ladybird disgorge a hippo. Could this really be the nation's shadow treasurer? The most popular man in federal politics? The arch rival Kevin Rudd rates a "long-standing mate"? A future prime minister of Australia?
"Just Joe," he says, smiling. His handshake is warm, his smile broad - but the eyes are weary. Hockey is at the nub of another 22-hour day and has fanged through Sydney traffic to be here (although an iPod thumping George Harrison's My Sweet Lord has helped). Right now, Joe Hockey needs a beer. Shame he's in training for a trek up Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania this July to raise money for a children's charity, the Humpty Dumpty Foundation. That means daily walks and definitely no beer.
But hang on - isn't this the same Joe Hockey who first embraced his inner party animal by winning the presidency of Sydney University's Student Representative Council in 1987 on the back of a loudspeaker strapped to his old Peugeot 504 and the offer of free beer? "Not true!" says Hockey. "It was $3 to join if you had a beer and $5 if you didn't!" But the damage is done and he relents. "I'll meet you halfway," he says, and orders a low-calorie amber.
Joe Hockey, 43, might be mired in Opposition, but his is a glass that's forever half-full. "We're the luckiest country in the world, so why would we jettison our faith in the future for today's despair?" he enthuses. Terrorism? Recession? Global warming? Big Joe isn't fazed. More than a decade ago, he kiboshed a "phenomenal job" in New York as chief advisor to the CEO of one of the world's biggest banks for the "unfinished business" of politics and to fulfil a lifelong destiny as "a warrior for the Australian people".
"I want my kids to be able to say to their kids, 'Your grandfather made Australia a better place.'" Is this a future PM talking? Hockey smiles. "If that opportunity came, great. But being prime minister doesn't make you the only one capable of making the country better. Each of us can do it, but it has to come from within."
What's within Joe? A workaholic ("I've done plenty of 36-hour days and never felt like a hero"), a God-botherer at war with his Catholicism ("I pop into church irregularly and say G'day to God"), an air guitarist ("I unleash AC/DC in the shower and Delta in the car") and a man of curious duality ("the most knock-around, beer-loving, footy-following bloke I know, and yet also the biggest sop," says Sunrise host David Koch).
Then there's Joe Hockey the athlete (he plays weekly touch football alongside Wallaby coach Robbie Deans), art buff (he restores European oil paintings from Sydney junk shops), farmer (he owns a 200-hectare cattle farm in Malanda, near Cairns in North Queensland - it sheltered a young sexual abuse victim at the centre of a media storm last year) and cat lover (in 2006 he rescued a kitten from rush hour on the Harbour Bridge and dubbed it Bridge-It).
But all those prefixes pale before what Hockey was badged with on February 16: shadow treasurer, his biggest challenge yet. Hockey's predecessor in the portfolio, Julie Bishop, suffered from the sniping of senior Libs and sideline pundits before resigning four months into the job. But in promoting Hockey from the tactically important role of manager of Opposition business in the House of Representatives, Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull (who has known Hockey since university days) has shown that he clearly rates the "formidable communicator, formidable performer".
So, it seems, does everyone. In fact, it's nigh on impossible to find anyone on either side of the political divide with a bad word to say about "Smokin' Joe". Hockey's genial nature, cuddly appearance and what Koch calls his "aura of approachability" have fuelled a rapid rise through Liberal ranks, propelling him from the presidency of the NSW Young Liberal Movement in 1991 and 1992, through advisory gigs for then NSW treasurer Peter Collins and premier John Fahey, and into preselection for the federal electorate of North Sydney at the age of just 28.
Hockey married Melissa Babbage (now head of foreign exchange and global finance at Deutsche Bank) in 1994, two years before he entered Federal Parliament. Both focused on work for 11 years before having Xavier, 3, and Adelaide, 2.
Former Liberal leader Brendan Nelson describes Hockey as "big, friendly, generous, quick to laugh and effortlessly authentic" and still marvels at his "unmatched appetite for pizza" and "incredible" kindness. "When I went through my separation and divorce, Joe told my friends he was worried about me and had them rally to my side," recalls Nelson.
But politics is still a shadowland. Hockey voted for another mate, Turnbull, in last year's leadership ballot. Nelson shrugs. "What mattered was that Joe felt my pain at losing and took me out afterwards, giving me the chance to open up and get over it. That's Joe: what you see is what you get."
In fact, today Hockey and Nelson share a quasi-executive frat house with fellow Liberal Bob Baldwin in Canberra when Parliament is sitting. "I sleep in the garage and Joe is always kind enough to wake me at dawn by warming his car engine at maximum revs or chipping the ice off his windscreen at high volume," says Nelson with a laugh.
Canberra is indeed a cold town, and there are still recurrent rumbles that he's more muscle than mind. Others claim he fluked his way into federal politics after Ted Mack unexpectedly resigned from North Sydney (actually, Hockey beat 13 others to preselection), and enjoyed a soft ride through health and ageing and tourism portfolios to become the youngest member of John Howard's cabinet in 2001.
Hockey has heard the digs about "laziness" and "lack of legwork"; how he is a "lightweight" on heavy issues and incapable of the magnificent bastardry federal politics supposedly demands. "Hatred is an emotional cancer and I won't indulge in hatred of individuals like some do in politics," is all he'll say.
Although he served as minister for financial services from 1998 to 2001 and had five months as shadow minister for finance, Hockey's prime currency is emotional, not financial. As a young lawyer with Corrs Chambers Westgarth, he once served notice on two crying wives, reclaiming their "homes, business, cars, boats, everything - it was horrific". But in Hockey's line of work, a soft belly is only for skewering. "Joe hurts more than most," says Nelson. "That makes him a big target."
But Hockey is tough, too, and that makes him a big weapon. He told Howard to step down prior to the 2007 election. He voted against legalised euthanasia and supported the bill for abortion drug RU-846 ("I believe in a woman's right to choose," say this recalcitrant Catholic).
"Joe suffered from the fact he was seen as being on the left of the NSW Liberals when Howard and the right were in the ascendancy," says former treasurer Peter Costello. "This put him on the wrong side of issues such as the republic." But now ex-chairman of the Australian Republican Movement Malcolm Turnbull is his boss, Hockey is back in the gang.
Hockey has proved he can thrive in the tough jobs. As minister for workplace relations (which some of his colleagues maintained he could sell, yet didn't understand) he was "minister for selling the WorkChoices turd sandwich", says touch footy pal and writer Peter FitzSimons. Hockey described his working days back then as "hand-to-hand combat".
The late social justice campaigner Bernie Banton, who died from asbestos-related causes, famously called Hockey "a grub" for his one-eyed views on unions. "Where was Joe Hockey during the James Hardie campaign?" said Banton. "We didn't see him for dust." His point forced Hockey to concede during the election that unions still played a role in supporting people such as Banton.
When WorkChoices brought down the government at the election, Hockey was calling it live for Channel Seven. Brooking tears, he copped it sweet but vowed revenge. Even his on-air adversary, Labor MP Tanya Plibersek, couldn't gloat. "You see someone's soul in defeat," she said of Hockey that night.
Joseph Benedict Hockey, the "small L" Liberal, suffers the torment of being named after "large L" Labor prime minister Joseph Benedict Chifley, the man whose postwar immigration drive brought the Hokeidonians to Sydney in 1948. Joe's father Richard arrived at 21 in Australia as a refugee from Bethlehem - then known as the British Mandate of Palestine - and anglicised the Armenian family name to improve business in their delicatessen.
Hockey's mother, Beverley, born in Chatswood on Sydney's North Shore, was working as a fashion model for Pix magazine when she met his father. "She was told by her mother not to speak to the wog in the corner store and she ended up marrying him," says Hockey, laughing. Bev bequeathed Hockey his steel. "She's the rock of the family: solid, determined, focused. She always gets in my ear and tells me to move on from hurt and disaster and not be dissuaded from my goals."
Hockey arrived on August 2, 1965, seven years after his sister Juanita, 50. He also has two older brothers, Colin, 55, and Michael, 57. "That age gap, and the fact both my parents worked seven days a week, meant there were moments when I was very lonely," he admits. From age nine, he was schooled at St Aloysius, on Sydney's lower North Shore. "The Jesuits taught me to test boundaries, ask questions, embrace selflessness," says Hockey.
He walks that line still, organising friends to donate money for bikes he gives to underprivileged kids at Christmas and drawing huge support from donors (John Singleton is kicking in $50,000 for the trek to Kilimanjaro; he also offered Hockey $500,000 to run for NSW premier). "Joe has spent most of his political career helping others," observes Nelson. "Maybe there'll come a time when he helps himself."
It's Hockey's most famous friendship that is also his most unlikely. Two backbenchers trading jokes, karaoke duets and friendly fire on Seven's Sunrise spawned a five-year ratings juggernaut and helped make Hockey a star and Kevin Rudd prime minister.
When Hockey and Rudd walked together along the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea in April 2006, both men's mettle shone. Hockey kept a photo of baby Xavier in a pouch under his hat and wept when he met a "fuzzy wuzzy angel" who had suffered with the diggers, while Rudd read his Bible on the outward-bound flight. At the spot where digger Stan Bisset cradled his dying brother, Butch, during the Battle of Isurava, Hockey broke into Danny Boy, the brothers' favourite song, and Rudd joined him in chorus.
Hockey even saved Rudd's life. "We'd stopped by a fast-flowing stream and Kevin was 20 metres upriver when he stumbled," remembers David Koch. "Joe and I saw him go down, unable to get to his feet. Quick as a flash, Joe thrust his hand out and saved him." Back home, Brendan Nelson says it "raised a few eyebrows on our side".
The PM closed Parliament for Christmas last year with the line: "Joe, you are loved and revered by many of us on this side of the House", but does being shadow treasurer spell the end of the Hockey-Rudd bromance? Hockey blasts laughter across the bar. "I don't know if he'll be saying that in a few years!"
Unlike Turnbull, whom Hockey awards 8.5 out of 10 for 2009 ("I'm inspired by Malcolm's determination and the fact that with every fibre in his body he wants to get to the Lodge"), Hockey gives his old sparring partner only five out of 10. "He's declaring war on everything - inflation, obesity, binge drinking - overcooking it with melodramatic rhetoric. I want Kevin to focus on Australia, rather than lecturing the world on climate change and toxic debt."
He sighs. "Worst of all, when Kevin's under pressure he gets nasty and he shouldn't do that." Hockey says it not as a foe, but as a mate. And one suspects that's why Rudd will feel its sting.
For now, Joe has a Mini idling and an iPod in need of a duet. Canberra awaits him and beyond that, Kilimanjaro. Joe Hockey's song is set: many rivers to cross, one big mountain to climb
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