Brutus:
'There is a tide in the affairs of men.Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;Omitted, all the voyage of their lifeIs bound in shallows and in miseries.On such a full sea are we now afloat,And we must take the current when it serves,Or lose our ventures.'
— Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Joe Hockey might not know his Shakespeare well but he would probably agree. Timing is all.
Hockey gave his farewell speech in parliament yesterday. He had resigned — after being ousted as treasurer by Turnbull — to take up a plum, taxpayer-funded ambassadorial position in Washington in the New Year, replacing the greatest ALP prime minister we never had, Kim Beazley, as well as gifting Malcolm with a by-election in his first weeks as prime minister.
So many chances, so many slips. After building a reputation as a good guy politician on Sunrise with his 'good mate' Kevin Rudd, he blew it by rescuing Rudd from drowning in a flooded river on their well-publicised Kokoda Trail expedition in 2006. Kevin 07 went on to prove he could win an election but not run a government very well, culminating in his removal by Julia Gillard, and hers in Kevin's counter-coup in 2013. As he mused today, the leaders' revolving door shows no sign of not swingeing.
Kindly Uncle Joe, the most popular politician in Australia in 2009, missed another chance when he threw his hat into the ring to become leader of the opposition after Malcolm Turnbull lost the confidence of the right wing of the Coalition over the emissions trading scheme. Joe favoured this to, yet suggested to the crew on 1 December that it should be left to a conscience vote, and ended up being eliminated on the first ballot. Abbott then beat Turnbull by just one vote, presumably his own.
Hockey's next chance was just after the 2013 Coalition win when as treasurer he introduced his first blunderbuss budget. It's normal for incoming treasurers to bring in tough financial measures and unpopular cuts at the early stage of a new government but Hockey, we gather with Abbott's support, ushered in such a savage budget, with such a focus on the young, aged and vulnerable, and breaking so many pre-election promises, that the people's trust in 'the man of the people' was irreparably broken.
It didn't help that he issued a self-aggrandising biography shortly afterwards which claimed not only that Hockey thought he should