High Steaks: Former Australian treasurer Joe Hockey on life in the US

Over oysters and lamb, Joe Hockey tells High Steaks why the US needed Trump’s shake-up and how Peter Dutton’s promise to halve fuel excise taxes could be an election winner.

It’s safe to say Joe Hockey has a deep and abiding affection for the United States.

But nearly a decade after he started spending much of the year in Washington DC, first as Australia’s ambassador and then as founding partner of strategic advisory firm Bondi Partners, there are some things he still doesn’t get about the place.

“Cheques! You still have to write cheques,” he says, laughing about how complicated simple financial transactions like paying rent or tax bills can still be in the US.

Hockey tells the story of having to write a cheque to pay the rent for his first apartment in Washington several years ago, only to have it sent back to him “because I signed in the wrong place.”

“I started the process of abolishing cheques in 1998 as Financial Services Minister, and I’d forgotten how to write them,” he laughs.

Joe Hockey at Brasserie 1930 at the Capella Hotel. Picture: Jonathan Ng

It sounds like a small thing, but for Hockey it’s a telling example of the difference between Australia and the US, which despite its massive, innovation led economy still has weird pockets of incredibly dysfunctional bureaucracy (“try registering a car,” he says).

The treasurer turned diplomat turned international deal-maker is telling the story over lunch at Brasserie 1930 at the new Capella Sydney boutique hotel in what was once the sandstone headquarters of the NSW Department of Education in the Sydney CBD.

US President Donald Trump with Joe Hockey in 2018 when he was the Australian ambassador to the US. Picture: Instagram

Joe Hockey with former prime minister Scott Morrison in 2019. Picture: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

Over briny rock oysters, lobster spaghetti, and meltingly tender and rare rack of lamb (“I love Australian lamb, I order it whenever I’m in town”), Hockey is sharing his thoughts on his long career, Peter Dutton, Donald Trump, and the differences between the two cities he calls home, Sydney and Washington.

“Donald Trump is a deal-maker, he’s always looking for the deal, he’s a New York property developer at heart,” says Hockey, who as ambassador was one of the only members of the foreign diplomatic corps to reach out to the eventual presidents’ team when he was first running for office in 2016 — a fact that he credits for helping Australia evade tariffs during Trump’s first term.

Joe Hockey in 2015 when he was federal treasurer with then immigration minister Peter Dutton. Picture: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

Joe Hockey on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Picture: Allison Shelley

Asked about the difference between Trump and opposition leader Peter Dutton, and how the two might get along if the Coalition wins office, Hockey thinks for a moment.

Dutton “is a more thoughtful person” whose brain is like someone who “plays chess”, versus Trump who “plays checkers and waits to see what you do.”

Hockey — who dined with High Steaks before Trump’s latest tariff blitz — also said that despite the volatility of the Trump administration there was not only a method, but a necessity, to what many see as madness.

“Trump promised to shake the place up, and at the end of the day America needed to be shaken, because it was falling into this abyss where it was becoming woke, everyone was worrying about what they say, Americans were being told how to live their lives, and they just don’t like that.”

“And I think Australians don’t either but Americans in particularly want to be the ones where they can control their lives and their destiny.”

Joe Hockey talks with James Morrow for High Steaks at Brasserie 1930 at the Capella Hotel. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Despite the difference between the two leaders, Hockey says he thinks “both Trump and Dutton are authentic characters, they both have a sense of what the average American or average Australian is thinking … and that’s the most valuable commodity in politics.”

Hockey says Dutton’s promise to halve fuel excise taxes is a reflection of that which gives him a better chance to overtake Albanese on May 3 than perhaps some give him credit for.

Dutton “is putting in a really solid performance … the first task of an opposition leader is to bring the team together and he’s done a remarkably good job on that.”

“The second job is to have an agenda and I mean it’s pretty clear he has an economic plan to reduce the cost of living, and he’s got a national security plan to protect Australians.”

Hockey, whose famous lifters and leaners Budget of 2014 was perhaps the last concerted effort by a government to wrangle government debt, says that even if seemingly small the fuel excise can make a big difference.

“It’s a big cost to a tradie, it’s a big cost to an Uber driver, and it’s a big cost to a family.”

That said, Hockey is impressed with how Sydney is travelling these days, and credits work he did in government with Mike Baird and Gladys Berejiklian for kick starting infrastructure projects like WestConnex that have been such game changers for Sydney- something he was proud to show off to his children during a recent trip back here.

“I took them out on it and said, you know Dad paid for this and they said, that’s great, why didn’t you just get a swimming pool?”

Do you have a story for The Daily Telegraph? Message 0481 056 618 or email [e-mail]