The last time Joe Hockey saw his career prospects plunge, he was sitting in a $39 a night motel room, contemplating the wilderness of Opposition.
It was June 2008, several months after John Howard’s government had been tossed out of office. It was freezing cold, and a bikie was plying his drug trade next door.
Joe says he got up, put on a t-shirt and walked over to him. “He looked at me and said, ‘I know you.’ I said I hope not. He said, ‘you’re a good guy.’ I said thanks. He said, ‘you need some of this shit?’ I said, I probably do but please just let me get a good night’s sleep.’’
Joe went back to bed; his bikie friend moved on.
It took Joe a bit longer than his bikie friend to move on. He stewed on the result, wallowed in self-pity, like many of his colleagues, and took an overseas holiday with his best mate Andrew Burnes to decide what he’d do next.
Life throws you a curved ball. You catch it, and move on.
Like many of his colleagues, he saw Opposition, after a long stint in government, as akin to unemployment.
And this week, after being turfed out of Cabinet, after years on the inside, it will be the same.
A big factor then, and now, in deciding what to do next will be his family. Joe and his wife Melissa Babbage - herself a successful merchant banker who is responsible for the family’s wealth - have three young children, aged 10 and under.
Like so many other families, Babbage has paid a price for Joe’s career trajectory; as his travelled north, she took a backward step.
Babbage is as sharp as a tack, rarely minces her words, and is good at giving Joe direct advice.
“It is what it is,’’ she told him after losing government in 2007. It’s a phrase she’s repeated often, no doubt including this week, and it fits her personality to a tee. Life throws you a curved ball. You catch it, and move on.
This week, the advice given to Joe by Melissa, would be the one he valued most. Next, would be that of his Melbourne-based best friend Andrew Burnes. Interestingly, they are both based outside Parliament.
(In fact, with the exception of three or four colleagues, none of Joe’s best friends are politicians; most sat in the same classroom with him, in year three, at St Aloysius on Sydney’s north shore).
But it would have been Melissa and Andrew who guided Joe, this week, to the decision to quit Parliament.
It’s a good decision. He’s young, having just celebrated his 50th birthday, with decades of public policy experience. On his game, there’s not a better policy advocate either.
But it would have also been hellish for him to remain. His relationship with Malcolm Turnbull, after the 2009 leadership ballot, would always be shaky; Melissa told me while writing his biography, that there would always be distrust between the pair.
And that’s despite their politics being much more in sync than that of Hockey and Tony Abbott.
But Hockey and Abbott were tied at the hip after brokering their own early deal to avoid the ugly fallouts we’ve witnessed in some other prime minister-treasurer partnerships.
He thought he’d be the next conservative prime minister. So did Tony Abbott. So did most of those now sitting around the table in Malcolm Turnbull’s Cabinet room.
That remains the case. Joe and Tony Abbott won’t be at each other’s place for dinner on Saturday night, but there are no ill-feelings, either, over Abbott’s 11th hour decision to offer Scott Morrison the deputy’s post.
It is what it is - and when you’re staring death in the face, as Tony Abbott was, you’ll try anything.
Joe Hockey would think that it was Scott Morrison’s decision, if he had become deputy, to decide whether or not to put him under a bus. That thought process, despite the commentary, absolves Abbott.
But that’s last week, and despite the five stages of grief being played out in Joe Hockey’s office - along with many others - he will now move on to embrace what’s next.
“It is what it is,’’ he said in his first appearance this week. Melissa stood at his side. “Politics has its ups and downs but if you make Australia a better place, it’s highly worth it.’’
They say a week is a long time in politics; when I sat down with Joe, to write his biography a couple of years ago, his star was unassailable.
He thought he’d be the next conservative prime minister. So did Tony Abbott. So did most of those now sitting around the table in Malcolm Turnbull’s Cabinet room.
They were all wrong. That’s the ups and downs of politics.
But knowing Joe Hockey as I do - and I suspect I know him as well as anyone outside his immediate family - his eye will now turn to a second career.
And I’m sure of this: he’ll do it without the bitterness that we saw Peter Costello spit this week on ABC TV’s Four Corner’s program and without the sideline sniping that another former treasurer Wayne Swan has parlayed into his new backbench career.
And that’s not a bad legacy for the son of an Armenian-born Palestinian who first made his home in Australia, as a refugee, in 1948.
Madonna King is a senior journalist, and has worked at News Corporation Australia, Fairfax and the ABC. She is the author of six books, including a biography of Joe Hockey.
