Senator Arthur Sinodinos

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Senator Arthur Sinodinos

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JULIA BAIRD: Hello, I'm Julia Baird. Welcome to Sunday Profile.

My guest today is Arthur Sinodinos, a man who for more than a decade was Prime Minister John Howard's closest advisor.

Howard describes their relationship as important, intense and unusually enduring. Sinodinos, he said, made him laugh.

Many also believe he helped him win. And when John Howard lost the 2007 election some blamed it on the fact that Sinodinos had moved to the private sector in 2006.

But now he's back and a politician in his own right. The Newcastle born son of Greek migrants has just been sworn in as a brand new Liberal Senator.

This week he gave his maiden speech where he set out what journalists saw as a policy blueprint, including the need for a big and more sustainable Australia, high levels of immigration and industry policies that encourage smart manufacturing.

He also conducted a brief memorial service for the industrial relations policy formerly known as Work Choices, admitting significantly that the Coalition had made a mistake because they had failed to prepare the ground for such a major reform.

Observers say John Howard, watching the speech from the public gallery, flinched when his former right hand man said the words Work Choices.

Senator Sinodinos insists he is his own man. I asked him how it felt to go from the relatively anonymous position of powerful adviser or consigliere to the prime minister to being a politician in his own right.

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Well all those years of observing politicians I always knew that if I took the further step and became one myself I'd be in the public spotlight.

But I guess now I see as an opportunity to speak with my own voice and I'm conscious of the responsibility that goes with that.

JULIA BAIRD: What did make you want to come out from behind the scenes and take on this role yourself? Was there something in particular? Because you seem to have toyed with this idea for a long time or at least it's certainly been touted.

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Well I have to admit that when I left Canberra in 2006 and moved to Sydney I moved with the idea that I would try and sort of have a commercial sort of career.

But over time I started to get suggestions, nudges, offers from people to maybe consider doing that. And you know, early on, particularly, I thought, well I'm trying to establish myself in the commercial sector, why would I just suddenly jump back into politics?

But over time I got to thinking about it some more and I realised at the age of 54, which I am now, if I didn't do something soon, probably it would be implausible to go, try and go into Parliament later.

So I thought, having had a taste of the commercial sector and enjoyed it, maybe I should give politics a go and see if there's anything else I've got left to contribute.

JULIA BAIRD: Well this week you gave your maiden speech and you talked about being proud of being Greek...

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Mmm.

JULIA BAIRD: ...which is the basis or cornerstone of all Western civilisation. You said you also attend a Greek Orthodox church, where you met your wife.

What does it mean to you to be Greek?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Well I suppose the abiding impression I have of growing up was learning Greek before I learnt English. We learned English properly when we went to school at the age of five. When I say we, my sister who's close in age to me. I've got a younger brother, some years younger.

The abiding impression I had is that we were in Australian society but we were different. We'd learnt a different language before we went to school.

There'd be dressing up competitions at school and I'd go in Greek national costume - you know, the skirt and the pom-poms - which I felt self conscious about.

There was a consciousness that we were different. You know, we had different types of bread, you know, the Vienna loaves rather than the sliced bread, that sort of thing, the feta cheese.

I was conscious of being different in that sense and to some extent when I was younger I was a bit shy about that.

But as I got older I became more, not open about it, I was always open about it. But I suppose in a sense I became more assertive about it and conscious of my roots and my Greek heritage. And also, you know, looking at Greek history going back, very proud of the contribution Greece has made to the evolution of Western civilisation.

I mean I wasn't trying to claim that Greece was the sole progenitor of Western civilisation. But you know that remarkable civilisation which, you know, engaged in abstract thought and created many of the concepts we still use today was something to be proud of.

And to some extent, you know, while Greece, modern Greece, has its problems, you know, I'm proud of the contribution that civilisation has made.

JULIA BAIRD: Well you always said that your mother has told you stories about the Greek Civil War of the 1940s where Communist insurgents would knock on the door in the thick of night and how your political views were formed early and also strongly influenced by the Cold War.

So can you tell us how they were influenced? And what was it that you were observing?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Well I grew up in, I was born in 1957. I grew up largely in the 60s and 70s in the shadow of the Cold War, the war in Vietnam and all the rest of it. And I was conscious of the divide between left and right.

My father was a member of the Seamen's Union and they were very much on the left. And they were very much campaigning against the US, against the US intervention, or whatever you want to call it, in Vietnam.

And in the background I had my mother's stories about life in Greece during the civil war, the role of the insurgents - or as the Greeks called them, the odagtes (phonetic).

And where this played out for me was I would look at something like the Soviet Union or China at that stage and clearly they were totalitarian states. And I couldn't for the life of me understand why there'd be leftist groups in Australia that would actually defend the Soviet Union or China.

And so I think from a young age I was always very cynical about people on the left who wanted to defend those sorts of regimes and very strongly in favour, I suppose, of democracy in the broad, as it's practised in the West.

JULIA BAIRD: Can you remember a particular moment as a child or as a student when you were reading something or watching something when it just dropped for you and you and you were like, okay, this for me is about the rights of the individual?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: That's a good question. I can't really isolate any one moment. I think during the evolution of the Vietnam War, while I was conscious that there was a large measure of it being a civil war, it was also clear that North Vietnam was a repressive Communist state. And I had no illusions that they were fighting to liberate South Vietnam and make it into some democratic paradise.

I think Vietnam had an influence on me. It sort of, maybe in a different way it had to a lot of other people where it pushed a lot of other people to the left and particularly made them more anti-American. It had, in some sense it pushed me the other way.

JULIA BAIRD: Well obviously you also spoke about policy in your maiden speech. And while watching it a couple of commentators had some interesting remarks.

Blogger Grog's Gamut, or Greg Jericho, tweeted: "Abbott in the audience to listen to Sinodinos talk about policy in a way Abbot could only dream." And News Limited reporter Malcolm Farr said, "Is this the policy blueprint Tony Abbott doesn't have?"

Do you acknowledge that this is the challenge for your Leader, Tony Abbott, to come up with a potent and persuasive political blueprint?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: (Laughs) Again a very good question. Look, the challenge that Tony always faces is the more successful he is in his, the first part of his job which is holding the Government to account, the more people say, well okay, okay, that's all happened, now what about the second bit?

The problem he's had on the second bit is that he's put out plenty of stuff where he's identified particular policies that would be part of, you know, a Coalition blueprint going forward. But that isn't as interesting for people to look at as reporting the clash of political titans in the House of Representatives between him and Julia Gillard.

The problem an opposition leader has got is that unless they are unrelentingly putting the Government under pressure they're not doing the first part of their job. And that's had to be in some ways a priority for him, particularly in the context where he could be potentially looking at two years. And no opposition leader puts every policy out with two years to go to the next election.

JULIA BAIRD: You said that working for John Howard taught you that politics is not worth a candle unless you are fighting for something.

Now you're going to be asked this question a lot (laughs) and you're obviously your own man now, but you spoke earlier about how you really need now to find your own voice and acknowledge your own views.

In which ways do you differ from John Howard - not just in temperament but in views?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: I think first and foremost I'm 18 years younger than John Howard is. And so I've grown in a different Australia to the one that John Howard grew up in. I grew up in a migrant household. He grew up in a more Australian household (laughs) I suppose.

I was born into different times, different Christian denomination, different type of family. And I grew up not so much in the shadow of the war I suppose, World War Two, which had a big influence on people through that period.

Inevitably, I will be different.

JULIA BAIRD: So what does that, how does that mean your views will be different - from growing up in 1950s, you know, comfortable, but we think of it as a white picket fence time, you know, 1950s Australia. It was certainly a time of prosperity.

I mean and you, if you're talking about the 60s through to the early 70s, a time of much more upheaval, of multiculturalism, of the Vietnam War. What is that going to mean for your political outlook and your views?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Well I think the 50s were a time of change but in a sense the change was bubbling away and it really didn't come to fruition 'til the 60s and 70s.

And so I grew up in an era where for example for me, feminism was not some new phenomenon. I sort of took feminism for granted, you know.

Now you'd have to ask Howard his views on all of that. But what I'm saying is I grew up in an environment where I took a lot of things for granted because of the changes that had preceded the particular period in which I grew up.

So I grew up in a period where cultural diversity, multiculturalism, whatever you want to call it, was pretty firmly established, okay? I grew up being comfortable with a whole series of things that an earlier generation had had to adjust to.

JULIA BAIRD: You're on Sunday Profile with me, Julia Baird, and Arthur Sinodinos, the new Liberal Senator for New South Wales.

Senator, how would you describe your relationship with Howard? I mean what do you put your rapport with him down to?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Oh I think there was a fundamental compatibility of beliefs and values. I mean some of the areas I just identified, I think there are big differences between us.

But I think in many ways we had a similar outlook - both relatively conservative. And I think on economic issues pretty similar views although I would say because I was trained as an economist, as I mentioned before, probably I was more market oriented to begin with than he would have been.

JULIA BAIRD: So what did that mean? How did that translate? Was this a discussion over IR policy, over taxation policy?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Look, in a lot of these areas probably because of my policy and economics background I'd be the sort of character who probably would have wanted to go further than was maybe on occasion politically pragmatic or appropriate.

One area where I think I was not as strong as he was was small business. He was very focused on looking after small business whereas, yeah, my training as an economist, we didn't tend to look at business as big or small. We lumped them all together.

JULIA BAIRD: Well John Howard told Peter Hartcher in 2007, talking about you of course, "He could tell me when I was wrong. Sometimes he changed my mind on things and other times he was completely unable to change my mind."

So when was he wrong and what were you able to change his mind on?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: One, if there's one example of that that comes to mind, it's probably, that comes readily to mind, it's probably in the context of the 2004 election campaign where we were talking about policies on childcare.

I can remember we were having a discussion about what more we could do in that area. And he was keen to do more.

And I and people in the office, the economic adviser Peter Crone and others, were thinking about whether, well why don't we make it in effect a policy where you make childcare tax deductible and also make a statement about recognising it as, you know, a legitimate expense in earning an income?

But he and Peter Costello I think were concerned about cost, obviously. And so it ended up being a childcare rebate to limit the cost and also to make it a relatively progressive measure because tax deductibility would obviously favour people with bigger childcare costs and more expensive childcare costs and that might well be people further up the income chain.

JULIA BAIRD: But did you mean in terms of tax deductibility, did you mean childcare centres as well as at-home costs, as well as baby-sitting or nannying costs?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Well in the broad. At that stage - and this is testing my recollection - I think this it was in the broad, yeah.

JULIA BAIRD: Right.

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Without seeking to discriminate too much between how it was done, okay?

JULIA BAIRD: Right. And what about episodes that were not the Howard government's, you know, finer moments, for example the children overboard affair? Is this something that you feel could have been handled better?

I mean this actually came back to the office that you were working in. I mean one of the great unresolved questions has been how the office, anxious to know what the state of play was, couldn't have discovered for months that the Navy did not claim that people were thrown overboard.

ARTHUR SINODINOS: I think by the end of the campaign when there was a video released, it was pretty, I mean we had no reason to hide the video. We weren't going to. We would have to release it. There were obviously questions over whether it had happened.

But we never saw the kids overboard thing as having the decisive impact on that campaign that maybe people out in the community think it did.

I must, I mean I was a bit aware of the issue obviously on the first few days of the campaign when it was initially raised in interviews and all the rest of it. And then we were obviously working on it towards the end of the campaign.

But I never, it was never a big issue in my mind as some sort of turning point in the campaign and something that we needed to keep on the front pages every day.

JULIA BAIRD: But irrespective of its potency politically or strategically, was this something that you felt could have been handled better or differently?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Well because of the rapidity of the campaign it ended up being handled after the campaign. And I think after the campaign it was basically handled through internal government processes and then through, I think, a parliamentary committee.

But in the rapidity of the campaign we handled it the best way we could.

JULIA BAIRD: What about our current policy on asylum seekers?

I was interested in your maiden speech you said that there were two parts of Christian teaching that resonated with you: the first to treat others as you would have them treat you; and the second from St Paul in Galatians 3:28 saying that we are all one in Christ Jesus and that as you say there should be no discrimination on the grounds of colour, creed, gender or other human constructs.

Do you accept that there would be plenty of refugee activists who would be disturbed about that and who would believe that we have been doing just that?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Discriminating?

JULIA BAIRD: Discriminating against people coming to Australia?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Well it depends whether you have in your mind the person you can see in front of you, who might be a person on a boat, or the person in a refugee camp in Africa or some other place that you can't see and that may be potentially losing their place in the queue because we have a refugee humanitarian program of a certain size.

JULIA BAIRD: But it doesn't take away from the fact that you have a person in front of you. And the question is how humane has our treatment been?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: But is it fair that the person in front of you may have paid people smugglers 10 or $20,000 to come here and another person in the same circumstances, in that same place, can't afford 10 or $20,000 to come here?

JULIA BAIRD: I guess my question is, given the obvious strong humanitarian bent that was evident in your maiden speech, given the breadth of the issues that we've had to deal with with asylum seekers - not just deterrence but humane treatment within detention centres, the length of detention, the age of people in detention - is this something that you have grappled with? Is this an area in which you acknowledge we may have made mistakes or responded too strongly, irrespective of which government we're talking about?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: I think one issue that the Howard government in particular grappled with was children in detention. And it took perhaps longer than it should have to get that resolved. It took two or three years to get that sorted out properly in terms of keeping kids in detention.

But you're caught betwixt and between. It's a bit like saying, should you have laws that deal with crime in the community or do you just show compassion and say, well someone ended up doing the wrong thing because of circumstances going back through their family history?

I mean you've got to have a capacity to enforce a law which has been put there for the greater public good.

JULIA BAIRD: But then if there was acknowledgement that something needed to be done about children in detention and the length of time spent in detention, why did that take so long to sort out?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Well because these, partly it's just the way the system can work. But also partly because people take time to try and devise a solution which isn't seen as another way of potentially giving encouragement for people to come here, because people smugglers interpret some change in policy as a softening of policy.

The fact is that the way we do things here sends signals to people overseas.

JULIA BAIRD: Do you think that we also need to be cautious that it's not also human distress and suffering that sends that signal?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Well governments are always caught betwixt and between because if you send the wrong signal you potentially cause further suffering by encouraging people to come here in the mistaken belief that they'll be able to jump the queue and be established as refugees here.

It's almost like you're balancing suffering and anguish and you're trying to find a formula for minimising it if you can.

JULIA BAIRD: So was this something that troubled you at the time? Were you one of the people who was pushing for a change to the legislation regarding children in detention?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: It was something that troubled the prime minister and he was the prime mover of trying to get that fixed.

I mean I'm not saying I wasn't concerned about it but I'm not trying to cast myself as the prime mover in this. It was the PM wanting to get that fixed.

JULIA BAIRD: Well let's talk about Work Choices. You made an interesting statement in your speech. You said, "Let me conduct a brief memorial service for the industrial relations policy formerly known as Work Choices. The truth is we failed to prepare the ground for such a major reform. The public weren't expecting it and with the economy strong, could not see the need for further change."

You also said that some employers had abused the freedom of stripping back the safety net.

Was that a difficult moment, to point out to the world that you may have got things wrong on Work Choices?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: No-one likes to admit when they're wrong. But you have to admit sometimes you're wrong when you are wrong and move on.

In the case of Work Choices it's something that probably the Coalition needed to have done more quickly after 2007, but I think they were pretty shell-shocked by the defeat and everything else.

Because there's no point continually picking at the scab. The truth of the matter is there were things wrong with the policy. I've admitted it. Others have admitted it.

The industrial relations regime we have now is Labor's industrial relations system. We're no longer debating Work Choices.

And we're not debating the return of Work Choices because people accept some of the basic issues with Work Choices and, having reflected on that, have moved on. And whatever policy we have in the future will reflect those lessons.

JULIA BAIRD: How do we move on? I mean when will the Coalition come out with an industrial relations policy and how robust do you think it should be?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Well look, the timing is really up to the leader, the leadership group. And I'm sure there will be a fair bit of discussion about the policy before it's released.

It needs to be compatible with the times. And the times are that we live in a world where there's a lot of competitive tension, all sorts of newly emerging economies in Asia, Africa and Latin America. So we, if we want to preserve our living standards and raise our living standards, have to be more productive.

We don't do it just by cutting costs. That will not work in this sort of environment. We have to do it by encouraging employers and employees to actually come together more in the workplace.

And I think if you have a system like the Fair Work Act which tries to interpose third parties and arbitrators too much into the system, it actually takes away from the responsibility of the parties to come to an agreement.

And I think it's important that they do because that's the only way you'll get sustainable improvements in the workplace.

JULIA BAIRD: It was reported that John Howard flinched when you said it was time to conduct a brief memorial service for Work Choices.

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Well he was probably, well I didn't consult him on what I was going to say. He was probably wondering, what the heck's he going to talk about?

You have memorial services to remember people. It's not because you sort of exhume the body and try and bring it back to life.

JULIA BAIRD: (Laughs) You think that's what he might have been worried you were going to say?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: (Laughs) Well who knows? Yes, a version of Weekend at Bernie's, yeah, if you remember that movie.

JULIA BAIRD: (Laughs) I do, I do. So the corpse is acknowledged, but buried.

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Yep. And we move on.

JULIA BAIRD: So what would be your ideal position moving on from here? I mean do you expect or hope to have a shadow ministry position?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Look, everybody who comes into politics wants to make as much of a contribution as they can. So clearly I would like in due course to have a frontbench position. But I've moved into the Senate and I'm on a learning curve.

JULIA BAIRD: But what would be your ideal spot? Which portfolio would you like most of all? And I know you must have thought about this.

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Obviously given my background, economic and social policy I'm very interested in. And clearly from the discussion we've had today and my background areas of immigration and, sort of, citizenship, cultural diversity, multiculturalism, whatever you want to call it, I take a deep interest in.

But at the end of the day, if a leader rings you up and offers you a job, whatever it is, you take it.

JULIA BAIRD: Just finally, you said the Howard government succeeded because he expressed the innate conservatism of the Australian people. Do you think this is the key to political success - understanding that Australians don't like change much?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: I wasn't saying Australians don't like change much.

JULIA BAIRD: So what do you mean by conservatism in this regard?

ARTHUR SINODINOS: I think what I mean by it is that Australians like that their society evolves rather than tries to jump forward in big steps. We're not ones for cultural revolution - certainly not in the Chinese sense.

But they are comfortable with what we are today because it happens over time. Australians are very much, I think, relaxed with who they are in terms of their identity, achievements as a country.

And that's, you know, we all recognise our blemishes and all the rest of it. But the point is, they are comfortable with the idea that we evolve rather than try and do things in revolutionary strides.

JULIA BAIRD: Bit by bit.

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Yeah. And that's what makes it stick, Julia.

JULIA BAIRD: All right. Senator Sinodinos, thank you very much for joining us on Sunday Profile.

ARTHUR SINODINOS: Thanks a lot.