Simon Birmingham, Leader of the Opposition Senate and a former senior minister in the Coalition Government, has announced that he will resign from Parliament following the election. Mr Birmingham is one of the Liberal Party’s few moderates and is shadow foreign minister. Now 50 years old, he has a (yet unannounced) commercial job.
He joined the podcast to talk about the ups and downs of his time in politics and the Liberal Party, share his biggest regrets and a few anecdotes.
So why does he go?
I don’t think I have the partisan fight that I probably had earlier in my career. So I think there’s probably an element of recognizing that current politics demands and requires people to engage in partisan battles. Fight within our system. And the team deserves the right people to take on that battle. I’ve always put the team first whenever I can, but that always requires compromise. And after all, after a while you start to get tired of compromises.
All of this together is, yes, a great and exciting opportunity to establish my career for the next 10, 20 or more years if possible. (…) And even now my family is able to stay in Adelaide, where their careers and education are flourishing.
Birmingham talks about regret and highlights climate change.
I wish Australia had better policy and direction on how to respond to climate change. It’s been a divisive and politicized issue throughout my career. The biggest missed opportunity was probably the National Energy Guarantee, but Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg came very close.
This is actually a mechanism that could have strongly supported the nuclear energy market as well, for example, and I wish we had found a way to identify that. Because if that were the case, I think our country’s policy situation would be better today.
As a leading moderate within the Liberal Party, Birmingham reflected on the Teal movement and its departure from the moderate wing:
I think especially in the last election, we not only got a clear message of dissatisfaction from moderate and teal-leaning seats.
But at the same time, party venues were no longer equipped to respond to such messages because they lost people who were about to hit their prime. People like Trent Zimmerman, Tim Wilson, Katie Allen, and Dave Sharma (who later returned to Congress as a senator) were becoming more powerful and authoritative voices in the party room. I think we would have been in a better position if they had been there.
I just hope that I can face the next election. (…) There are great new candidates in various seats who I think are true guardians of the liberal tradition in the Liberal Party. I hope we can get those seats back and recover. Part of the balance in the party room.
Following Donald Trump’s return, Birmingham shares his experience serving as trade minister in the Trump Mark I administration.
At a dinner with Donald Trump (…) we got into a discussion about the trade balance between our countries and ended up reaching for some documents I had that showed how long this had been going on. I remember when I passed a graph to a table. And how big is the US trade surplus with Australia?
I don’t think trade relations should be a dichotomy of surplus versus deficit, but at the end of the day, if it sways his thinking, we need to sell it on that point. .
He also recalls:
I was planning to go from Ottawa to Washington DC on my way back to Australia, but while I was in Ottawa I got a call from Joe Hockey telling me to get some documents as his counterpart from New Zealand was here on his way to Ottawa. I said that I was asked to do so. Australia is also exempt from tariffs on steel and aluminum. And Bob Lighthizer, Trump’s trade minister, was furious at New Zealanders and called them to office, saying, “You don’t understand, and Australia should never understand.” I kicked him out. And Joe said to me, hey, if there’s a family emergency, I think you should go back to Australia.
Lo and behold, I took Joe’s sage advice and advice and headed straight back to Australia, apologizing to the people in Washington DC I was planning to meet.
