This week’s outrage over John Barilaro’s $ 500,000-a-year commercial role in New York has fueled memories of my previous role as head of the Canberra office for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
During my five years in Parliament’s press room, my inbox occasionally pinged me with a government press release announcing that a former politician had been nominated for a diplomatic role somewhere in the fabulous part of the world. world.
The appointment of John Barilaro to the comfortable position of NSW Trade and Investment Commissioner in New York is hard to justify. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Press releases were usually sent on a Friday afternoon in the hope that reporters would have gone home during the week or could not travel in time to cover the story for that evening’s news program or the next day’s newspaper. This cynical maneuver is known in our industry as “taking out the trash” or “Friday news dump” and it irritated me a lot for the lack of respect for the public’s intelligence. The government knew that jobs for colleagues looked bad and so they tried to bury the news about them.
My default position at the time was that most of these publications were undeserved, but my stay in London as a European correspondent for the Herald and The Age in 2020 and 2021 gave me a new perspective on political appointments.
As we wrote in an editorial published on Friday, sometimes political publications are justified. It makes sense for positions in key countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, to be occupied by people with political experience, a direct line with the Prime Minister, and a willingness to push the boundaries.
During my stay in London, I saw how the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade worked abroad and it was often not nice. Bureaucrats who acted as ambassadors were unwilling to take risks, did not know how to “work” properly on the political landscape of their host country, and all too often told their leaders in Canberra what they thought they would want to hear.
In London, I had a good time watching and reporting on how George Brandis, the former Attorney General of Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull, acted as Australia’s High Commissioner to the UK and I thought it was a good example of how some politicians may be great diplomats.
His political knowledge was instrumental in reaching an agreement for the UK to give Australia four million doses of the Pfizer vaccine last year when the country desperately needed an additional supply. He also took advantage of his political experience to sell a free trade agreement between London and Canberra to skeptical conservatives representing agricultural constituencies. Brandis recently told my colleague Latika Bourke that much of her success in London was based on her ability to communicate with former cabinet colleagues in Australia and new friends in Westminster.
Former Labor leader Kim Beazley was also an excellent ambassador to Washington, with former South Australian Prime Minister Mike Rann still considered an effective representative in London and later Italy, and l former Liberal Treasurer Joe Hockey did a good job navigating the dangers of the Trump administration. during his time as ambassador to Washington DC.