REFLECTIONS OF AN AUSTRALIAN AMBASSADOR TO THE US DURING THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

Donald Trump’s unconventional presidency turned politics and diplomatic relations in Washington DC on its head. When The Hon Joe Hockey, former Australian federal Treasurer, found himself an unlikely diplomat in this new world order, his unorthodox dealmaking instincts placed him in the hot seat at precisely the right moment in history. In his new book on the experience – Diplomatic – A Memoir – Joe Hockey charts his job of working for Australia as Ambassador to the United States at a time of a US presidency that labelled the national capital a “swamp”. To hear some of the milestones along the way, Joe Hockey addressed The Sydney Institute on Wednesday 13 April 2022. The paper which follows is an edited transcript of his comments on the night.

REFLECTIONS OF AN AUSTRALIAN AMBASSADOR TO THE US DURING THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

JOE HOCKEY

Thank you very much, Gerard. It is great to see so many familiar faces as well. Although it feels as though it’s been some time since I’ve been at The Sydney Institute, but it’s great to see Gerard and The Sydney Institute team.

Obviously, I acknowledge former colleagues like Michael Yabsley, Malcolm Kerr and a range of others but, in particular, Leo Shanahan. Leo has his name on the front of the book, albeit in smaller print than mine. We had an incredible collaboration making this happen. As a former journalist, he loved working late hours; as a small business person in Washington DC, I started my day at 5am – somehow, we managed to nut out what is a really interesting series of stories and learnings of not just Washington DC, but everything that helped to make it all happen.

I first went to the United States as a kid in the 1970s. I was the youngest of four children and, being the youngest, I was the one that was spoiled. I got to travel with my parents. Of course, the 1970s, as many of you will remember, was a period where it was pretty black and white. You were either Liberal or Labor, you drove a Holden or Ford, you supported the Eastern Suburbs Roosters, or Manly or Warringah, you liked Sherbet or Sky Hooks. It was pretty uncomplicated. Of course, you also remember when we had a wave of American culture hit us in our daily lives. I remember when we got our colour TV in the 1970s, and we’d see all these American TV shows, particularly police shows. They had a thing about Adam-12 and old police shows. It seemed to be a very violent place, the United States, but they also seemed to have a lot of fun.

We had disco come into our lives, and every Saturday night, or Sunday night, we’d sit around the new colour TV and watch The Wonderful World of Disney. My boyhood dream was to go to Disneyland; and we went to Disneyland and learned a bit about Los Angeles. I was waiting for Adam-12 or Starsky and Hutch to come along and make it all real. Of course, in many cases, it wasn’t real, but it was my first impressions of the United States. After I went there a couple more times. The first time I went as a young lawyer. I’d done my article clerkship for an ambulance chasing law firm – it certainly wasn’t King-Wood Mallesons – in London. Lockerbie happened, the tragedy of Lockerbie and Pan Am. My law firm said, “You have to serve some papers.” They were into a class action. He added, “And we’re going to fly you to the United States.” I thought, “Wow, that will be fantastic. First time as an adult.”

They put me on a Pan Am plane, because it was the cheapest flight; I travelled at the back. I went to New York, served the papers, and then decided to take my own little trip to Washington DC. But Washington DC in those days was a very violent city. For all that, I thought it a fascinating place. But my career took another turn, when I came back to Australia and worked as a lawyer for a few years. I worked in state parliament for Nick Greiner and John Fahey, and then ended up going into parliament myself. After that, the only time I went to the United States was in a business capacity. I thought I knew the United States because I’d been to New York, and Washington, and Los Angeles, and San Francisco. I thought, “Yeah, I know what the United States is like. I’m an expert on the United States; I’ve been to four cities there.”

It was only, really, when I became the ambassador to the United States that I truly came to understand the nation, that really is 50 separate nations. It’s a very, very complicated place, yet so important for Australia; vitally important for Australia. Even when I got to the United States following on from Kim Beazley, I felt as though I didn’t know the country. So, I had a number of great conversations with Kim Beazley, with Dennis Richardson, with Michael Thawley and a number of the predecessors. I went and saw Andrew Peacock. They gave me some really great lessons about how to serve as an ambassador; how to do the job I wanted to do.

Kim Beazley knows, even until this day, the registered number of every individual tank in the US army, because he was obsessed with military history. But even then, it hadn’t quite dawned on many that Australia had partnered with the United States in battle on every occasion since the Battle of Hamel, back in 1917. This is a really important piece of history because we’re the only country that has fought side by side with the United States in every single major conflict for 100 years.

That 100-year anniversary was approaching, and it gave me a narrative that was very powerful in the United States, which was, “We’re your mates”. Jack Lew, who was Secretary of the Treasury under President Obama, told me that President Obama wanted to use the term “mate” about Australia, but he didn’t know whether it was offensive or not. I assured him it was not offensive. It’s like “buddy”, but maybe a couple of levels higher in terms of commitment to each other. So, we started a campaign called the 100 Years of Mateship. That narrative really resonated, because the relationship between the US and Australia is a bit like a long marriage. Sometimes we take each other for granted and, in order to keep that marriage going, you’ve got to have something to talk about beyond the day to day.

When I got to Washington DC, it was the last year of the Obama administration. President Obama’s people kept saying, “You’re not the squeaky door, we don’t need to see you.” And we had very limited access. Even Kim Beazley said he didn’t have much access to the White House at all. Yet, I was quite determined, having chaired the G20, with Tony Abbott in 2014, having met all these world leaders. I was absolutely determined that we would not be taken for granted. So, we needed to have something to talk about, and 100 years of working together was just the narrative that we needed.

Other countries, of course, have done it over the years. The UK always talks about the special relationship. Winston Churchill gave an incredible speech in Fulton, Missouri – the Iron Curtain speech – where he talked about that special relationship between the US and the UK. The US has been a force for good in two world wars; it changed the course of two world wars to our great benefit. But still, never take it granted.

When I went to the United States as ambassador, I really didn’t want to be an ambassador, to be honest. I wanted to be prime minister. I was Treasurer and there was the palace coup. Malcolm Turnbull knocked off Tony Abbott. Malcolm called me around to his office and said, “What would you like to do?” I said, “I’d like to be Treasurer” He told that was not possible. I said “Well, why not?” He told me he had promised it to Scott Morrison. So, he said, “Any job, what do you want to do? Anywhere. Do you want to be Minister for Defence?” My response to that was I thought the uniforms really ran Defence and the ministers was just a token. Of course, that’s not quite true with Peter Dutton. But I said no. Over two or three days, I said to Melissa, my wife, “I’m done. I don’t trust the people around me. I don’t like the way they’ve behaved. I don’t want to see a revolving door with prime ministers and, quite frankly, if I hang around I’ll just be full of a need for revenge. I care more about my country than I do about myself in this instance, and I think it’s time to go.”

I describe that moment in the book. It’s still a very hard moment. Just sitting in my office full of boxes, signing the resignation letters to the Speaker. I didn’t have to do it, but I knew I needed to do it for a whole lot of good reasons, including to stop the cancer of destabilisation and also for my own mental health. I needed to start again, to find a new career. Malcolm said, “Kim Beazley’s going; do you want to go to Washington?” I had 24 hours to make my decision. I had a young family who would be uprooted. Melissa had a great career as a company director in a number of companies. It was a complete sea change. We talked about it and just decided yes. It would be good to get out for a bit.

So, there we go, Joe’s off to Washington. Previously I’d always sworn to myself, I’m never going to be an ambassador. I’m never going to be the sort of person who will have cocktails, talk about inane stuff and use complicated language rather than simple language, therefore, forget it.

I didn’t know how much I was going to get paid, how much the school fees were; I didn’t know anything about a lot of personal stuff involved and I didn’t care until I had to. I didn’t know anything about how the embassy was run and how big the footprint was in the United States. When I got there, I discovered a few key facts. Number one, the embassy has around 400 people and, as Ambassador, you’re sort of like a mini prime minister. You’ve got all these departments that have representatives in the embassy. Most of the departments in the government have someone in the Washington embassy. But it’s not only that embassy; you’ve got military personnel in 32 US states. A lot of people don’t know how intimately involved we are with the US military. On top of that, you’ve got offices, consulates in New York, in Houston, Texas, in San Francisco, in Los Angeles, in Honolulu and in Chicago. You’re responsible for all those people – and, under a quirk of Australian law, you are personally liable for their welfare, which is a whole other story.

It was sort of a journey of discovery. How would I handle this? All of sudden, I became a public servant. The Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs told me, “You know, I’m your boss now.” I thought to myself, “Like hell.” Even the Minister for Foreign Affairs said, “I’m your boss.” But, for me, it was sorry – the prime minister is the boss. I’ll certainly do all the right things, but this is how I’m going to operate. Maybe that was arrogance, maybe a bit of hutzpah, but it was the only way I could operate, to have the freedom to do what I thought was necessary for the country.

So, Donald Trump’s campaign started – and there are a number of stories in the book about the Trans Pacific Partnership. We nearly pulled it off, the deal with the chief of staff to President Obama on election day. He and I hatched a plan to get it through. America joining the TPP. But that fell over with Donald Trump’s election.

When did I start to think that Donald Trump was going to be elected? It was very early on. I had reached out to the campaign, and the Trump campaign had said “Can we meet?” Of course, Canberra was appalled. The public servants went into meltdown; “Why would you ever meet Donald Trump? Why would you even engage?” I said, “Because it’s a two-horse race, and you never know.” They replied they knew he would not win. They started to believe all the rubbish that appeared in the Australian media. I said, “Hang on, I feel there’s something happening out there.” That was reflected in the fact that Trump ended up losing the vote to Hillary Clinton in the top 30 cities in America but won the election.

Something was happening out there, and I could sense it. My own political experience kicked in. In Australian politics, we always talked about the fictional character – but real character – Betty Bankstown – is a swing voter. I said, “Let’s find Mary Milwaukee.” And we did. I identified Mary Milwaukee as a mum, probably in her mid-40s, with two children, one an older boy that had done three tours of duty in Afghanistan and was suffering PTSD.  She also had a daughter that she hoped one day would go to college, but she never thought she’d have the money for it. Her husband was one of the 2.5 million truck drivers in America, working all sorts of hours, fearful of these new electric, driverless trucks. What’s his future? She might have been the daughter of a coal miner from West Virginia, who had lost his job. She worked at Walmart and got $12.50 an hour and had done so for the last seven years without a wage increase. She went to church twice a week because a lot of people in the Midwest do. She was brought up with a set of values.

For years, whoever was in Washington, let alone Hollywood and late-night TV, had made fun of her. She wasn’t educated, she didn’t have a future – the future was with all those bright sparks disrupting the business. Someone starts an online business called Amazon and closes a local shop. She says, “What happened to my friend Betty that runs a local bookshop?” Or she’s made to feel guilty about having a gas guzzling car because she’s destroying the environment. Or she’s made to feel guilty even about being married and heterosexual. Somehow all of the things that she believed in were not only not part of the modern world, but she was even humiliated about her attitudes. They laughed at her. No one had given her a voice. Along came Donald Trump, and he was authentic. She didn’t like some of his behaviour but, by God, he was the first person to be authentic. To give her a voice; to stand up for her, to even go and visit her and to partner her on the journey. He was standing up to the Washington swamp, and to Hollywood.

Trump had been incredibly successful in his own life, and Mary Milwaukee knew him because she’d watched him on TV and she’d seen his rise, and she was prepared to have a go. There was a telling moment during that campaign. George Osborne, the former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer and myself – two failed finance ministers – were sitting having a bottle of Kim Beazley’s fine red wine. Kim was a teetotaller and left a great cellar. We were on our second bottle watching the debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. There was a particular moment where Donald Trump said, “What have you got to lose? How’s it going for you?” The majority of Americans were thinking the country was headed in the wrong direction, and when someone says to you, “What have you got to lose?” you think you’ve got nothing to lose. It’s a powerful line.

Donald Trump repeated it the next day to a big African American audience; he said, “How’s it going for you?” There was at the time massive unemployment, high drug use, huge violence, family breakdowns. So, Trump was asking, “How’s it going for you as an African American community? I know hardly any of you are going to vote for me, but what are you going to lose having a go?” It’s such a powerful cut through line. Of course, Donald Trump has appropriated from other people a lot of those lines. He appropriated from a New York Times journalist, a line about “The Wall”, in Mexico. He appropriated the line “Lock her up”; when he was standing at one of those, way too long, rallies. Someone held a sign up about Hillary which said, “Lock her up”. He just repeated it “Lock her up”, and everyone started chanting, so he made that the mantra about Hillary. He was a showman, of course he is, and a powerful communicator, usually at Grade 3 language. But it was a message that resonated with the American people, and he won; the whole world fell off its collective chair.

All of a sudden, it looked really smart that I had reached out to the campaign when everyone else hadn’t. There was that famous email trail, where a deputy secretary of a department in Canberra told me I was a fool for reaching out to Trump; I couldn’t find it after that. The email disappeared from the system, which is no real surprise, I guess. Of course, everyone wanted to know what was going on. I’d always thought Donald Trump was going to be exactly the same a president as he was a campaigner – somewhat unpredictable, gut instinct, the things that served him well that made him a billionaire, gave him a beautiful family, made him a TV star. He’d use the very same skills, deployed the very same tools as president of the United States, and it was quite a ride. That unpredictability actually made him a hell of a more powerful president than almost any of his predecessors.

In fact, the truth is Donald Trump is the most influential person in American politics probably for the last 60 years. He controls, at the moment, the Republican Party. It’s his support that matters, not that of the Republican Party – I’ve never seen anything like it. He will determine who the next president of the United States is. He will have a big influence on whether the Republicans win the House and the Senate in November this year. Just as his bad influences cost elections in Georgia, that cost the Republicans the Senate after the presidential election. His behaviour on 6 January 2021 caused massive reputational damage to American democracy. Having said all of that, America works. America really does work. We wouldn’t be here, right here at The Sydney Institute – we wouldn’t be sitting with one another – if we didn’t have the vaccines that came out of Operation Warp Speed. That was Trump’s initiative, where he said, despite the advice, throw everything at it; every vaccine, including AstraZeneca. American money backed AstraZeneca.

Trump said, “Throw everything at it. Everything we’ve got.” When even the advice was, “be selective”. Of course, a large number of the vaccines failed, but he did it. At the same time, he was encouraging people, stupidly, to inject detergent into their bodies. That’s where he lost it; where he made it was the economy being incredibly strong. America proved resilient. I don’t think we’ve seen a better illustration of the resurgence of America than the leadership they’ve shown in relation to Ukraine and Russia. That comes from the fact that America had built a resilience and an ability to say, “Enough.” And was not afraid to engage with the world. Trump was part of that narrative.

I don’t want to talk about Trump all night. In the book, we talk quite a bit about China. There’s a great story in it, if I do say so myself, about when I first went to China, at 14 years of age. In Beijing, everyone was on pushbikes. People wore green and blue suits, representing two arms of the PLA. No building was more than four stories high, there were no neon signs. People came up to me and pinched my cheek because they had never seen a white person before, let alone a white kid. Then, fast track, I’m treasurer of Australia, I’m sitting there at a conference in the Great Hall of the People and I remarked to Premier Li and the leaders of China that my eyes had seen the greatest transformation in the most number of lives in the history of humanity. And we have. “Thank you for embracing capitalism,” I told them, which didn’t go so well. But it’s the truth. Prosperity made China what it is now, and it needs prosperity to continue. That great challenge of China versus the Western world is something that we address in the book as well. There are many different aspects to it.

Finally, I’ll just say this; the three most powerful countries in the world, without much doubt are Russia, China and the United States. All three countries were born out of really horrendous revolutions. All three countries followed up with horrendous civil wars. There is an inherent distrust of head office; there’s an inherent distrust in Russia of Moscow, there’s an inherent distrust in China of Beijing; and the same in America – there’s an inherent distrust of Washington DC.

The difference between the three of them is that two of those countries can only run their countries through the force and the power of head office. In the case of the United States, their institutions and their Constitution protect the individuals. I would never for a second deny them the right to stand up for their freedoms, because the freedom they have gives them the hope they have. I see that time and time again. I recall going into a diner in Los Angeles and there was a waitress I started to chat to. She had really bad skin. I asked her what she was doing. She wanted to be an actress, but she was working three shifts to try and get the money for cosmetic surgery. She said, “I have a little girl, as well, a daughter. I’m a single mother.” I said, “That’s fantastic.” She said, “I might not get to Australia, but I really hope my daughter does. In fact, I want to make sure she does. She can have whatever dream she wants.”

That’s the glue that holds that country together, hope. That one day your daughter could be president of the United States, could go to college, could be whatever she wants to be. The US makes that dream possible. When it doesn’t, it will fall apart. That’s why the power in America actually isn’t in Washington, it’s in the community. It’s in all communities. That’s a stark contrast to China and Russia, and many other countries around the world.