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The Deal Magazine, Australia
June 21, 2013 Friday
Let's get serious
by GLENDA KORPORAAL
THE NEAR CERTAINTY THAT JOE HOCKEY WILL BE FEDERAL TREASURER AFTER THE
SEPTEMBER ELECTION IS CHANGING PEOPLE'S PERCEPTION OF HIM - AND THE
MAN HIMSELF.
Joe Hockey has just landed in Devonport on a Thursday morning. The
shadow Treasurer is visiting from Canberra the day after giving his
budget reply speech to a packed Great Hall at Parliament House. So
strong was the interest that the event had to be moved from the
traditional venue at the National Press Club. Afterwards, Hockey took
questions on his views about the budget, tax reform, the federal
bureaucracy and even gay marriage.
"How do you think it went?" he asks the deal over the phone from
Tasmania, where he is touring a manufacturing plant with Opposition
Leader Tony Abbott. "It was a huge crowd. It was sold out, apparently.
There were a lot of people there I had never seen before."
The man expected to be Treasurer after September 14 - barring a very
improbable turnaround - had spent days in his office earlier that
week, working on his response to incumbent Wayne Swan's likely last
budget.
"It was a really hard speech to write. As you get closer to the
election, it gets harder. On the one hand, you are meant to write for
The Daily Telegraph and, on the other, you are meant to write for the
boffins. If you are the Treasurer, you have the budget papers to back
up what you are saying. But if you are the shadow Treasurer ... "
Finance Minister Penny Wong had been on radio that day criticising
Hockey for not giving enough detail about the Coalition's plans, while
another media commentator had criticised him for revealing too much.
"I thought to myself: Crikey, you can't win."
>From Tasmania, Hockey will fly home to Sydney to spend time in the
North Sydney electorate he has represented for 17 years and see his
wife, former investment banker Melissa Babbage, and their three young
children. Then he will travel to Melbourne for weekend functions and
back to Canberra on Sunday night.
As the certainty of a Coalition win grows, more people are trying to
get a fix on Joseph Benedict Hockey, 47, the financial lawyer turned
politician who will be one of the key figures in a new government.
The youngest son of Palestine-born Richard Hokeidonian, who is of
Armenian and Arabic descent, and an Australian mother, Beverley,
Hockey's name and face are already familiar. Yet there is increasingly
the sense that something has changed. People are noticing not only his
slimmer look - a stomach-reduction operation has helped him shed 20
kilograms - but also a new seriousness in his approach to the job.
The man who ran for the presidency of Sydney University's Student
Representative Council in 1987 by offering free beer is becoming more
determined, more focused. And rightly so. After all, Hockey expects to
inherit a budget deficit considerably worse than the official estimate
of $18 billion, economic growth weaker than budget forecasts of close
to 3 per cent a year, a Treasury department whose reputation has taken
a battering with business and the financial markets, and a nation
mired in what he calls "an age of entitlement", with oversized
expectations that the government is there to solve everyone's
problems.
Foxtel chief executive Richard Freudenstein has known Hockey since he
was at Sydney University, where Hockey studied arts and law, played
rugby and met Abbott. "[Joe] was a larger-than-life personality, fun
to be around and always happy to have a beer and a chat," he recalls.
"He had a great interest in people and politics right from the start.
He quickly found a place on the SRC where his campaign continued the
time-honoured university tradition of free beer for his supporters."
Freudenstein, too, has noticed the recent change in his friend. "Joe
was an excellent minister in the Howard government, but there's an
even greater level of seriousness about him now. He has spent
considerable time talking to the business community and mastering his
brief."
Brian Tyson, former local head of global public relations and lobbying
firm Kreab Gavin Anderson, says the business community firmly supports
the Coalition, but is keen to know more about its strategy. "In
Hockey, they see an affable and engaging personality who is warming to
the task ahead," he says. "He is clearly one of the best performers
and brings senior cabinet minister experience to what will be a very
challenging role."
Hockey is certainly a relaxed and experienced media performer, his
skills honed in many breakfast TV duels with former prime minister
Kevin Rudd. Yet his easygoing manner belies a fierce determination
that those about to deal with him as Treasurer ignore at their peril.
A few weeks before the budget, the deal is in Hockey's Canberra
office. After some official photographs are taken - the Liberal Party
is keen on shots of its new-look shadow Treasurer - Hockey suggests
having lunch in the sunshine. So we head to a small courtyard nearby.
Hockey is keen to remind people about his lengthy career in business
and politics and that he will bring nine years' experience as a
federal minister to the position of Treasurer.
"I was a junior minister for finance and assistant to [former
treasurer] Peter Costello," he says. "No one who has become Treasurer
has had that experience. Peter Costello never did, Wayne Swan never
did, Paul Keating never did, Bill Hayden never did ... I lost my
training wheels years ago."
In 1998, then prime minister John Howard picked the 33-year-old Hockey
as his minister for financial services, a role with oversight of the
Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, Australian Securities &
Investments Commission, Australian Competition & Consumer Commission
and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Hockey was minister for small business and tourism from 2001 to 2004
and minister for human services from 2004 to 2007. In the latter job -
with the second-largest number of staff, after the Defence Department
- Hockey had oversight of Centrelink, Medicare and the Child Support
Agency. He restructured Medicare and reduced its head-office staff by
several hundred. At the start of 2007, with a tough election due later
that year, Howard gave Hockey the politically tricky workplace
relations portfolio, partly on the strength of his media skills. That
post elevated him to cabinet.
Before claiming the seat of North Sydney in 1996, which includes the
lower north shore where he grew up, Hockey was a financial lawyer with
Corrs Chambers Westgarth. He worked on the privatisations of the State
Bank of NSW and the Government Insurance Office and was an adviser to
NSW premier John Fahey in the early 1990s.
He has a wide range of contacts in business and politics. Other
university friends include Football Federation Australia's David
Gallop and indigenous leader Noel Pearson. Former John Fairfax group
general manager Bob Falkingham and former Coles Myer chief Bevan
Bradbury are among his mentors.
Hockey's business connections include John O'Neill (a former chief of
the State Bank of NSW and the Australian Rugby Union and now chairman
of casino company Echo Entertainment), ASIC chief Greg Medcraft (the
pair met when Hockey worked on the securitisation of David Jones'
credit-card business with Medcraft, who was with investment bank
Societe Generale), former ABC chairman Maurice Newman, investment
banker Ken Allen, former NSW premier Nick Greiner and Sydney Olympics
bid leader Rod McGeoch.
Hockey is only too aware of the easy criticisms levelled at him in the
past. Sloppy Joe. "I've copped it all the time," he says with some
emotion. "He's lazy, they say. People should look at my travel logs
over the years ... You can't climb the ladder and be lazy in politics.
Howard wouldn't have made me a minister after only two years in
parliament and given me all the hard jobs if I was lazy."
But he has noticed that the treatment of him by others has changed
since his stomach operation - for the better. Or perhaps his decision
to have the operation was part of a broader change in himself.
Hockey is emphatic when asked to name his most important mentor - it's
his father Richard, born in Bethlehem and educated in the Old City of
Jerusalem and who arrived in Darwin in 1948, at the age of 21, with
nothing and built a successful small business selling real estate on
Sydney's lower north shore. "My father has been my lifetime hero,"
Hockey says. "He speaks six languages and has skills I haven't got."
Richard settled in Bondi, where he opened a delicatessen and married
Beverley, the young beauty down the road. They later crossed the
bridge and set up a delicatessen in Chatswood, where Joe, the youngest
of four children, was born. After moving to Naremburn, they
established the real estate business that is still there today.
The Hockeys purchased the property next door and several others, but
the early 1970s recession threatened their livelihood. Hockey
remembers his mother saying the whole family had to pitch in and
somehow the business survived.
Hockey's parents worked so hard that they could never take time off to
see young Joe play weekend sport, something he recalls with emotion.
But they scraped together enough so that he could attend a good
Catholic school, St Aloysius' College at North Sydney, and study at
Sydney University. While his parents were working, the young Hockey
became friendly with Falkingham, who lived close by and taught him all
about the business of newspapers and advertising and how to buy
shares.
Hockey's brothers still run the agency from that next-door corner
property, while the original premises are the electorate office of NSW
Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian. Friends say Hockey regards the
42-year-old Berejiklian, who is also of Armenian descent, as a younger
sister. It could be a significant relationship after the election.
As a young man, Hockey also bought shares and real estate and his
family property portfolio includes a farm in Queensland and houses in
Sydney's Hunters Hill, Canberra's Forrest and Stanwell Park, south of
Sydney. Despite that success, the fierce determination of Richard,
migrant and small businessman, still drives his son.
Hockey has a busy first-term agenda: abolition of the mining and
carbon taxes; a financial system inquiry; a review of government
spending and service delivery; a parliamentary standing committee to
review the Australian Taxation Office and the tax system; a budget in
surplus "as quickly as possible"; eliminating the Clean Energy Finance
Corporation; cutting federal debt; a Productivity Commission review of
workplace relations laws, with recommendations to be taken to the 2016
election; and tax-reform policies to take to the same election.
And he has a clear message for the electorate: "Don't come to the
government to solve all your problems. Start by trying to solve them
yourself." He says the Coalition won't go into the election promising
a bucketload of goodies. "We won't make promises we can't deliver. We
will live within our means. We will be prudent without being austere."
And while puns such as "Swan song" are getting plenty of use in the
media, Hockey remains extremely wary of overconfidence, or even the
perception of it. "[We're] just getting on with the job, not getting
ahead of ourselves. I want to emphasise that."
______________________________
>> Glenda Korporaal is the editor of the deal.
June 21, 2013 Friday
Let's get serious
by GLENDA KORPORAAL
THE NEAR CERTAINTY THAT JOE HOCKEY WILL BE FEDERAL TREASURER AFTER THE
SEPTEMBER ELECTION IS CHANGING PEOPLE'S PERCEPTION OF HIM - AND THE
MAN HIMSELF.
Joe Hockey has just landed in Devonport on a Thursday morning. The
shadow Treasurer is visiting from Canberra the day after giving his
budget reply speech to a packed Great Hall at Parliament House. So
strong was the interest that the event had to be moved from the
traditional venue at the National Press Club. Afterwards, Hockey took
questions on his views about the budget, tax reform, the federal
bureaucracy and even gay marriage.
"How do you think it went?" he asks the deal over the phone from
Tasmania, where he is touring a manufacturing plant with Opposition
Leader Tony Abbott. "It was a huge crowd. It was sold out, apparently.
There were a lot of people there I had never seen before."
The man expected to be Treasurer after September 14 - barring a very
improbable turnaround - had spent days in his office earlier that
week, working on his response to incumbent Wayne Swan's likely last
budget.
"It was a really hard speech to write. As you get closer to the
election, it gets harder. On the one hand, you are meant to write for
The Daily Telegraph and, on the other, you are meant to write for the
boffins. If you are the Treasurer, you have the budget papers to back
up what you are saying. But if you are the shadow Treasurer ... "
Finance Minister Penny Wong had been on radio that day criticising
Hockey for not giving enough detail about the Coalition's plans, while
another media commentator had criticised him for revealing too much.
"I thought to myself: Crikey, you can't win."
>From Tasmania, Hockey will fly home to Sydney to spend time in the
North Sydney electorate he has represented for 17 years and see his
wife, former investment banker Melissa Babbage, and their three young
children. Then he will travel to Melbourne for weekend functions and
back to Canberra on Sunday night.
As the certainty of a Coalition win grows, more people are trying to
get a fix on Joseph Benedict Hockey, 47, the financial lawyer turned
politician who will be one of the key figures in a new government.
The youngest son of Palestine-born Richard Hokeidonian, who is of
Armenian and Arabic descent, and an Australian mother, Beverley,
Hockey's name and face are already familiar. Yet there is increasingly
the sense that something has changed. People are noticing not only his
slimmer look - a stomach-reduction operation has helped him shed 20
kilograms - but also a new seriousness in his approach to the job.
The man who ran for the presidency of Sydney University's Student
Representative Council in 1987 by offering free beer is becoming more
determined, more focused. And rightly so. After all, Hockey expects to
inherit a budget deficit considerably worse than the official estimate
of $18 billion, economic growth weaker than budget forecasts of close
to 3 per cent a year, a Treasury department whose reputation has taken
a battering with business and the financial markets, and a nation
mired in what he calls "an age of entitlement", with oversized
expectations that the government is there to solve everyone's
problems.
Foxtel chief executive Richard Freudenstein has known Hockey since he
was at Sydney University, where Hockey studied arts and law, played
rugby and met Abbott. "[Joe] was a larger-than-life personality, fun
to be around and always happy to have a beer and a chat," he recalls.
"He had a great interest in people and politics right from the start.
He quickly found a place on the SRC where his campaign continued the
time-honoured university tradition of free beer for his supporters."
Freudenstein, too, has noticed the recent change in his friend. "Joe
was an excellent minister in the Howard government, but there's an
even greater level of seriousness about him now. He has spent
considerable time talking to the business community and mastering his
brief."
Brian Tyson, former local head of global public relations and lobbying
firm Kreab Gavin Anderson, says the business community firmly supports
the Coalition, but is keen to know more about its strategy. "In
Hockey, they see an affable and engaging personality who is warming to
the task ahead," he says. "He is clearly one of the best performers
and brings senior cabinet minister experience to what will be a very
challenging role."
Hockey is certainly a relaxed and experienced media performer, his
skills honed in many breakfast TV duels with former prime minister
Kevin Rudd. Yet his easygoing manner belies a fierce determination
that those about to deal with him as Treasurer ignore at their peril.
A few weeks before the budget, the deal is in Hockey's Canberra
office. After some official photographs are taken - the Liberal Party
is keen on shots of its new-look shadow Treasurer - Hockey suggests
having lunch in the sunshine. So we head to a small courtyard nearby.
Hockey is keen to remind people about his lengthy career in business
and politics and that he will bring nine years' experience as a
federal minister to the position of Treasurer.
"I was a junior minister for finance and assistant to [former
treasurer] Peter Costello," he says. "No one who has become Treasurer
has had that experience. Peter Costello never did, Wayne Swan never
did, Paul Keating never did, Bill Hayden never did ... I lost my
training wheels years ago."
In 1998, then prime minister John Howard picked the 33-year-old Hockey
as his minister for financial services, a role with oversight of the
Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, Australian Securities &
Investments Commission, Australian Competition & Consumer Commission
and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Hockey was minister for small business and tourism from 2001 to 2004
and minister for human services from 2004 to 2007. In the latter job -
with the second-largest number of staff, after the Defence Department
- Hockey had oversight of Centrelink, Medicare and the Child Support
Agency. He restructured Medicare and reduced its head-office staff by
several hundred. At the start of 2007, with a tough election due later
that year, Howard gave Hockey the politically tricky workplace
relations portfolio, partly on the strength of his media skills. That
post elevated him to cabinet.
Before claiming the seat of North Sydney in 1996, which includes the
lower north shore where he grew up, Hockey was a financial lawyer with
Corrs Chambers Westgarth. He worked on the privatisations of the State
Bank of NSW and the Government Insurance Office and was an adviser to
NSW premier John Fahey in the early 1990s.
He has a wide range of contacts in business and politics. Other
university friends include Football Federation Australia's David
Gallop and indigenous leader Noel Pearson. Former John Fairfax group
general manager Bob Falkingham and former Coles Myer chief Bevan
Bradbury are among his mentors.
Hockey's business connections include John O'Neill (a former chief of
the State Bank of NSW and the Australian Rugby Union and now chairman
of casino company Echo Entertainment), ASIC chief Greg Medcraft (the
pair met when Hockey worked on the securitisation of David Jones'
credit-card business with Medcraft, who was with investment bank
Societe Generale), former ABC chairman Maurice Newman, investment
banker Ken Allen, former NSW premier Nick Greiner and Sydney Olympics
bid leader Rod McGeoch.
Hockey is only too aware of the easy criticisms levelled at him in the
past. Sloppy Joe. "I've copped it all the time," he says with some
emotion. "He's lazy, they say. People should look at my travel logs
over the years ... You can't climb the ladder and be lazy in politics.
Howard wouldn't have made me a minister after only two years in
parliament and given me all the hard jobs if I was lazy."
But he has noticed that the treatment of him by others has changed
since his stomach operation - for the better. Or perhaps his decision
to have the operation was part of a broader change in himself.
Hockey is emphatic when asked to name his most important mentor - it's
his father Richard, born in Bethlehem and educated in the Old City of
Jerusalem and who arrived in Darwin in 1948, at the age of 21, with
nothing and built a successful small business selling real estate on
Sydney's lower north shore. "My father has been my lifetime hero,"
Hockey says. "He speaks six languages and has skills I haven't got."
Richard settled in Bondi, where he opened a delicatessen and married
Beverley, the young beauty down the road. They later crossed the
bridge and set up a delicatessen in Chatswood, where Joe, the youngest
of four children, was born. After moving to Naremburn, they
established the real estate business that is still there today.
The Hockeys purchased the property next door and several others, but
the early 1970s recession threatened their livelihood. Hockey
remembers his mother saying the whole family had to pitch in and
somehow the business survived.
Hockey's parents worked so hard that they could never take time off to
see young Joe play weekend sport, something he recalls with emotion.
But they scraped together enough so that he could attend a good
Catholic school, St Aloysius' College at North Sydney, and study at
Sydney University. While his parents were working, the young Hockey
became friendly with Falkingham, who lived close by and taught him all
about the business of newspapers and advertising and how to buy
shares.
Hockey's brothers still run the agency from that next-door corner
property, while the original premises are the electorate office of NSW
Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian. Friends say Hockey regards the
42-year-old Berejiklian, who is also of Armenian descent, as a younger
sister. It could be a significant relationship after the election.
As a young man, Hockey also bought shares and real estate and his
family property portfolio includes a farm in Queensland and houses in
Sydney's Hunters Hill, Canberra's Forrest and Stanwell Park, south of
Sydney. Despite that success, the fierce determination of Richard,
migrant and small businessman, still drives his son.
Hockey has a busy first-term agenda: abolition of the mining and
carbon taxes; a financial system inquiry; a review of government
spending and service delivery; a parliamentary standing committee to
review the Australian Taxation Office and the tax system; a budget in
surplus "as quickly as possible"; eliminating the Clean Energy Finance
Corporation; cutting federal debt; a Productivity Commission review of
workplace relations laws, with recommendations to be taken to the 2016
election; and tax-reform policies to take to the same election.
And he has a clear message for the electorate: "Don't come to the
government to solve all your problems. Start by trying to solve them
yourself." He says the Coalition won't go into the election promising
a bucketload of goodies. "We won't make promises we can't deliver. We
will live within our means. We will be prudent without being austere."
And while puns such as "Swan song" are getting plenty of use in the
media, Hockey remains extremely wary of overconfidence, or even the
perception of it. "[We're] just getting on with the job, not getting
ahead of ourselves. I want to emphasise that."
______________________________
>> Glenda Korporaal is the editor of the deal.