Treasurer’s biography fuels rifts in Australian government – An
authorised biography of Australian-Armenian Joe Hockey

July 25, 2014

The Herald – Treasurer Joe Hockey’s new ”authorised” biography,
Hockey: Not Your Average Joe, by journalist and author Madonna King,
is shedding new light on the tensions within the Coalition – the same
sorts of rivalries, friendships and enmities that plague any political
party, regardless of its colour.

I’m part-way through its 300 or so pages, which start with Joe’s early
years as the late child of an Armenian shopkeeper who married a
Bondi-bred beauty queen and divorcee with three children.

Forced to grow a thick skin as the ”fat wog-boy” of his school (as
it says on page 22), Hockey used a mixture of debating skill and
entrepreneurial nous to push his way through law school and student
politics. He famously won the Sydney University student council
presidency in 1987 with a campaign based on free beer, before entering
Federal Parliament as the member for North Sydney in 1996, aged 30.

Hockey emerges from these pages as a forthright character who calls a
spade a spade, but there will be those in the Coalition who wish he
had not been so frank with his biographer. In recent days, we have
learnt Hockey felt betrayed by Malcolm Turnbull in the 2009 Liberal
Party vote that made Tony Abbott opposition leader. We have heard how
Abbott gave Rupert Murdoch a detailed account of his controversial
paid parental leave scheme before he announced it without consulting
his shadow cabinet or party room.

We have been told Hockey stands by the accuracy of the book, and,
most interestingly of all, that he believes this year’s ”lifters and
leaners” budget should have cut harder than it did. In time, I won’t
be surprised if that phrase – ”lifters and leaners” – comes to dog
Hockey as the Banana Republic dogged Paul Keating from his time as
federal treasurer.

Ian Kirkwood

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress