How Arthur Sinodinos was fever-pitched into Washington

Our ambassador in Washington starts his new career in challenging circumstances.

Sinodinos presents his credentials to the President in the White House. Picture: Joyce N. Boghosian

When Arthur Sinodinos arrived in Washington in early February to take up Australia’s most important diplomatic post, he could hardly have imagined the dramas about to unfold.

At that time Australia was a very big story in the US, with the nation’s devastating bushfires making front-page news around the country. Within days Sinodinos — the former senator, minister and longtime adviser to John Howard — was sitting in front of Donald Trump in the Oval Office, being quizzed by the President about backburning as Sinodinos presented his credentials as Australia’s new ambassador to the US.

“When I saw him (Trump) the bushfires were very much on his mind,” says Sinodinos.

“He asked about the fires and what might happen afterwards and what was the best way of dealing with them. He asked about backburning, he had heard about that, and what they do in Darwin around backburning (with) indigenous practices.”

Sinodinos and Trump had a long chat and got on well. So, with that first key meeting under his belt, Sinodinos was about to do what all new ambassadors in Washington do: blitz the US capital shaking a thousand hands and creating contacts and networks.

Except that it barely happened. Instead, within weeks the coronavirus pandemic descended on the US like the grim reaper, forcing most of the country into their homes and turning Washington into a ghost town. So, Sinodinos is introducing himself to the movers and shakers of the world’s most powerful city via video link from White Oaks, the Australian ambassador’s residence.

“It’s been a real mixture for me,” he tells The Weekend Australian in his first extended interview since taking over from Joe Hockey. “We found ourselves in this new world … it has meant doing a lot of stuff by telephone or video conference, including talking to people in the administration … to people in the congress … we have adapted to the new normal.”

While almost everyone in Washington outside the White House now meets “virtually”, 63-year-old Sinodinos has to be especially careful to avoid the coronavirus because he is still rebuilding his immunity after recovering from the lymphoma cancer that forced him to take leave from the Turnbull ministry in 2017.

He and his wife, Elizabeth, and their three children — Dion 18, Isabella 9, and Alexander, 7 — spend their days at the residence, the children doing school and study online and Sinodinos working from his study.

When Scott Morrison offered the role of ambassador to Sino­dinos last year he did not hesitate to take it. He had been offered it back in 2005 by then prime minister Howard but he felt he was too young to do the job.

“After the last election I had a choice of either going into the ministry or doing this job and I thought in the circumstances you don’t reject this sort of job twice. I have no regrets (about my choice), notwithstanding the unusual way this job has developed. It’s fascinating to be in Washington and it’s a fascinating political system.”

Before arriving in Washington, Sinodinos sought advice on the role from former ambassadors to the US Kim Beazley, Dennis Richardson and predecessor Hockey.

Hockey’s advice was to just “be himself and be authentic” while Beazley’s was to remind Americans the alliance was a “two-way street” and to always let them know what Australia brought to it.

“It’s not a case of trying to do what Joe did or what a previous ambassador did, everyone does it in their own way,” Sinodinos says. He takes up the job when the US relationship is at a historic high, with no major irritants and an abundance of goodwill. Trump has long put his fractious 2017 phone call with Malcolm Turnbull behind him, Australia is no longer at risk from the President’s tariff regime, and the President has forged a warm personal relationship with Morrison, as shown by the lavish state dinner he threw for him in Washington last year. The two countries also have a shared interest and concern about a rising China. When Sinodinos walked into the Oval Office in February, Trump had just finished a phone call with golfer and friend Greg Norman. “(Trump) mentioned he had just been on the phone with Greg Norman and he was asking how the Prime Minister was going, it was very warm,” says Sino­dinos.

“I thought he was very open and receptive towards us and it also confirmed something the Prime Minister had said to me before I came here, which is ‘you will find that the President when you engage him asks you a lot of questions’. That is how he probes. He may have an idea about something, but he will probe and ask questions and work out what people think and what’s the evidence for that sort of proposition, etc, which I found quite interesting. It wasn’t one of those conversations where he just talks to you, or talks at you, it was more interactive.”

Sinodinos at White Oaks, the ambassador's residence in Washington. Picture: Mary Balzary

Sinodinos has not wasted his short time in Washington. He has had a long conversation with Trump’s new chief-of-staff, Mark Meadows, a former congressman he says “spoke very warmly” about Morrison and who attended last year’s state dinner.

Sinodinos has asked Meadows to help ensure supply lines remain open from the US to Australia for medical equipment related to the pandemic. The US is an important provider of personal protective equipment and ventilators.

“He (Meadows) was saying: ‘Look, if we can find more supplies of those we are happy to help.’ He was very friendly.”

Sinodinos has met Attorney-General William Barr and Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow, a range of congressmen, senior State Department officials and Health Secretary Alex Azar. With just six months to the presidential election he is also reaching out to leading Democrats. “We are being even-handed,” he says.

Sinodinos says those he has met are “well disposed towards Australia — you get a lot of goodwill. I think their sense is that we are good and reliable partners, they see us as prepared to be on the front foot with issues like 5G, foreign interference laws, that sort of thing”.

“They see us as people they can bounce ideas off and realise that if we want to give advice we are not going to use a megaphone, we are going to talk to people behind the scenes rather than shirtfront anybody publicly.”

The most urgent issue for Sinodinos in the past month has been to help Australians in the US get back to Australia while flights are still available. The embassy also has had to deal with the various cruise ships near the US that had Australians on board and to work out how to bring them home.

Sinodinos has watched how the coronavirus has had very different impacts on Australia and the US, with Australia all but bringing it under control while it rages through the US, where it has already killed more Americans than the Vietnam War. He believes the US has been hit much harder because it is such a decentralised and much larger country that cannot exert the same sort of tight, co-ordinated federal control that Australia can.

“My job is what lessons can we draw from what is happening in the US … but in a sense I am not sure there are that many lessons because there are differences in the way things operate here.

“It is a decentralised system, so a lot of decisions are taken at many levels here.”

Sinodinos is watching carefully to see what changes the pandemic will bring to the global order, including trade patterns and possible opportunities for Australia to collaborate more closely with the US in a range of fields including frontier technologies.

He is an optimist when it comes to the long-term impact of the pandemic on the US economy, despite the pain in a nation where more than 20 million people have lost their jobs in the past month.

“While the US faces a challenge at the moment in terms of employment and output I just feel very bullish about the medium and long-term prospects of the US economy because they still have such an advantage in many areas of technology and innovation,” he says. The pandemic also has brought the US and Australia closer on the issue of China, with Morrison calling for an independent investigation into the origins of the China-born virus while Trump has accused Beijing of not doing enough to alert the world and prevent the spread of the disease. Both actions have upset Beijing, but Sinodinos says an inquiry makes sense.

“I think it’s important for us to have the inquiry because this has been potentially a world-changing situation, so the idea that we could go through this without reflecting on the lessons I think would be negligent on all our parts,” he says.

More generally on the question of China, while Sinodinos says a “strong and prosperous China” is in everyone’s interests, he believes Australia and the US should continue to “push back in areas where we believe there has been overreach by China”.

“I think what President Trump has done in his own way is essentially say there are a whole series of areas where (the US) should call the Chinese out and that we should be prepared to be upfront about this, whether it’s in respect of perceived unfair trade practices, for example, and deal with this, rather than be overly diplomatic about it and have no impact. And I think he (Trump) has had an impact in that regard.”

Sinodinos says Australia, the US and other Western nations have a “common interest” in combating issues such as cyber activities, interference, disinformation and other actions China has been accused of in the past.

“Where the alliance with the US comes in is recognising the extent to which, whether it’s cyber activity, disinformation, state actors as well as non-state actors, we in the West have a common interest in battling,” he says. “The rules-based order the US put together after World War II rested on a very strong relationship between the various Western players, and I think going forward that’s got to be the case as well, whether it’s through (the) Five Eyes (intelligence alliance) or like-minded countries working together to push back in areas we believe there has been overreach by China.”

The Trump administration has praised Australia for its tougher line against Beijing in recent years, including foreign interference laws, the banning of Chinese tech giant Huawei and efforts to counter China’s push to gain influence in the South Pacific.

Sinodinos believes the US will continue to rely on and value Australia’s knowledge of the Asia-Pacific. He recalls attending a lunch in Washington in the late 1990s with Howard and president Bill Clinton and vice-president Al Gore, where Clinton pressed the Australian officials about events in East Timor.

“You could see him, he was like a blotting pad taking it all in. They look to us because our expertise and understanding of some parts of the world can help complement theirs. I think Howard always had a good understanding of that.”

Sinodinos, who forged his reputation as a political strategist as Howard’s long-time chief-of-staff, still calls his old boss to discuss issues. “We had a conversation about 10 days ago. I just wanted to see how he was going with the whole pandemic. He was his typical phlegmatic self, very practical, getting on with it, observing the isolation and social distancing.”

When it is again safe to travel, Sinodinos wants to spend time in the smaller US towns and rural areas that voted for Trump in 2016 and are likely to back him again in November’s presidential election.

Sinodinos believes the Australian government might have been less surprised by Trump’s 2016 victory if it had understood better the dynamics unfolding in those parts of the midwest that turned sharply to Trump.

“All we can do from an Australian perspective is try to understand the dynamics of what is at play,” says Sinodinos.

As a good diplomat, he makes no predictions about who will win between Trump and Joe Biden, except to say the polls at this early stage are virtually meaningless.

“As you saw with the Australian election last year, you can have polling going a certain way for a long time but it can turn around. One thing is for sure, after the result we will all be able to explain it,” he says, laughing.

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News.