Politics with Michelle Grattan: Simon Birmingham on Liberal moderates, regrets, and Donald Trump

Opposition Senate leader and former senior minister in the Coalition government Simon Birmingham has announced he will quit parliament. Birmingham, one of the few remaining moderates in the Liberals’ ranks, is shadow foreign minister. Now , aged 50, he’s defecting to a (yet to be announced) commercial job.

He joins the podcast to talk about the highs and lows of his time in politics and the Liberal Party, as well as to share his biggest regret and a couple of anecdotes.

So why is he going?

I don’t think I have the same partisan fight in me that I probably had in the early days of my career, and so I think there is an element of recognising that perhaps politics, as is, requires and demands people to take on the fight in our system. And the team deserves people who will take on that fight. I’ve always put the team first, as much as I possibly can, and that requires compromise at all times – and in the end, after a while, you start to tire of the compromise.

So all of that together with yes, a great and exciting opportunity that sets my career up for hopefully the next ten, 20 or longer years of work life. […] and still enables my family to stay in Adelaide, where their careers and education are flourishing.

Speaking about regrets, Birmingham highlights climate change:

I wish we had better landed policies and direction around how Australia responds to climate change. It’s been the thread right throughout my career – of division and politicking. I think the biggest missed opportunity was probably the National Energy Guarantee, which Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg came so very close to landing.

It’s actually a mechanism that could have strongly supported a nuclear energy market, for example, as well, and I wish that we had found the way to see that through because I think our policy landscape would be much better today had that been the case.

As a leading moderate within the Liberal Party, Birmingham reflects on the teal movement and where it leaves the moderates:

I think the last election, in particular, not only sent us a clear message of dissatisfaction from more moderately aligned and teal-leaning seats.

But it simultaneously left the party room less well-equipped to respond to those messages because we lost some people who were really about to come into their prime and their own. People like Trent Zimmerman and Tim Wilson and Katie Allen and Dave Sharma [Sharma has since returned to parliament as a senator], they were becoming much stronger and more authoritative voices in the party room, who I have missed greatly in this term and where I think we would have been better placed having them there.

I just hope that coming into the next election where […] we’ve got some great new candidates in different seats who I think are true custodians of the liberal tradition in the Liberal Party, I hope that we can win those seats back and restore some of that balance in the party room.

With the return of Donald Trump, Birmingham recounts his experiences when he was trade minister during the Trump Mark 1 administration:

I remember at [a] dinner with Donald Trump […] we did get into a debate about the trade balance between our countries, and I ultimately reached into some of the documents I had and handed a graph across the table that showed for how long and how significantly the US has had a trade surplus over Australia.

Whilst I don’t think trade relations should be about the binary of surplus v deficit but, in the end, if that’s what’s going to sway his thinking, we’ve got to pitch it in that regard.

He also recalls:

I was scheduled to go from Ottawa through to Washington, DC on my way back to Australia, and Joe Hockey rang me while I was in Ottawa and said, mate your New Zealand counterpart came here on his way to Ottawa and he asked to get the same exemptions to the steel and aluminium tariffs that Australia has got. And Bob Lighthizer, who was Trump’s equivalent of the trade minister, went nuts at the New Zealanders and marched them out of his office saying, ‘you’re not getting it, and Australia never should have either’. And Joe said to me, mate, I think it might be best if you have a family emergency and head back to Australia.  

Lo and behold, I took Joe’s wise advice and counsel, made my way straight back to Australia, making apologies to those in D.C. I was meant to see.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

Interview on Michelle Grattan on The Conversation podcast
3 December 2024

Michelle Grattan: Simon Birmingham, Opposition Leader in the Senate and the Liberal Party’s foremost moderate, has called time on his parliamentary career. Like Bill Shorten on the other side of politics, Birmingham is choosing, rather than being forced to start an entirely new line of work in his 50s. A former minister who held the education, trade and finance portfolios in the Coalition government, Birmingham is leaving to go into the commercial world, although he’s not specified what job he’s taking up. He joins us today to talk about his decision, the highs and lows of a political life and the state of the Liberal Party.

Simon Birmingham, you’re quitting when the Liberals have at least an outside chance of winning the election. And if that happened, you’d have been foreign minister. So, to depart now is a big decision. I think of Josh Frydenberg, for example, who’d walk over the proverbial hot coals for a way back to politics. Was this a midlife crisis where you just fed up with the demands of politics, or did you just get an offer that was too good to refuse?

Simon Birmingham: [Laughs] Well, Michelle, I think it’s a little bit of all of the above, if I’m being honest. I don’t think I have the same partisan fight in me that I probably had in the early days of my career. And so, I think there is an element of recognising that perhaps politics, as is, requires and demands people to take on the fight in our system and the team deserves people who will take on that fight. And I’ve always put the team first as much as I possibly can. And that requires compromise at all times. In the end, after a while, you start to tire of the compromise and if you can’t do that, then you can’t be an effective member of the team. So, all of that together with, yes, a great and exciting opportunity that sets my career up for hopefully the next, you know, 10, 20 or longer years of work life, if I’m to use you as a great example, and still enables my family to stay in Adelaide, where their careers and education are flourishing.

Michelle Grattan: Now you first entered the Senate in 2007. What do you think’s changed in politics since then, and has it changed for the better or for worse? You mentioned partisanship. My feeling is that it’s become more hyper partisan over those years. Is that your perception?

Simon Birmingham: I think we’ve followed very much the global trends and so, yes, I think things are more partisan than they probably used to be and particularly if you think about the tales of Senate committee collegiality, cross party cooperation, it still happens and it’s important when it does, but it’s probably not as embedded as it once was and even when I started. I think we shouldn’t catastrophize; politicians and politics have always been to a degree, you know, unpopular, ridiculed. I’ve sort of learnt over the years people tend to have a view of the collective, which is quite negative. But then of the individual it’s often ‘but my MP is not that bad, or I like that particular one or other’, and so it’s interesting when you reflect on how community engagement and perception of politics is, no overall, but often gives the exception to the one that they know who is closer to them. I think I’d have to say since 2007, that the biggest change is the fragmentation in the media market, the rise of social media as a source of news and information, and that I think that is a driver of the different types of populism, tribalism and partisanship that we see nowadays that is of a different nature to what used to be the case and sadly I think also takes out of the cycle time for issues to be properly debated and considered; that everything moves so damn quickly that there is very little scope for big reforms to have weeks and weeks of proper debate and analysis.

Michelle Grattan: And also, I think social media has brought a lot more nastiness, hasn’t it? But is it a case of bringing nastiness that was always there just to the public surface, or has it in fact bred more nastiness?

Simon Birmingham: Sometimes I say that I think we’ve gone back a couple of centuries to the old times when the conspiracy theorists used to produce the town flyer that would circulate around the local village, and that we’ve kind of broken down almost through some of those online sources back into that way. I am conscious though of the impact of the nastiness. You know, recently my great, quite new colleague Maria Kovacic spoke in the Senate in relation to one of the abortion and termination related issues and the hate that Maria’s office and she personally copped after that was really quite shocking and equally reminded me of how much my skin has thickened up and hardened up throughout close to 20 years in public life. But that for, not just Maria but her staff in a much newer office, they’re not as accustomed to batting away that and it was a reminder of actually how vicious it can be and that those of us who may have become battle-hardened actually should reflect on that, and also need to make sure we’re giving support to colleagues. And as tough and strong as Maria is, it was an important reminder to me of making sure other colleagues understand how important it is to rally around one another, especially most particularly, when you might disagree on the issue, but you should absolutely back each other in terms of the courtesy and the conventions and the respect that should be had, even where you have a different opinion.

Michelle Grattan: Now, you arrived just before the extraordinary revolving door of prime ministers on both sides of politics and you said in your farewell speech that you’ve seen, and I quote “too many prime ministers, and I acknowledge the political blood on my own hands during those more turbulent times”. You were a player in the coup by Malcolm Turnbull against Tony Abbott. Looking back, was that in fact a good idea, that coup? And do you regret your part at all in that?

Simon Birmingham: Michelle, I don’t regret it. I regret the whole sequence of revolving doors that that we did go through, and I don’t think that was a great cycle for Australian democracy and certainly, I wanted to say that – because there’s no point shying away from the role that I played in that revolving door on that particular occasion. And it weighed heavily on me at the time. You know, I’m somebody who sleeps very soundly at night, but I have never had a more sleepless period than in the week leading up to that vote and the removal of Tony as PM. As much as Tony and I come from different philosophical strands of the Liberal Party, when he got elected PM, I had hoped and believed we were putting those challenges behind us, but ultimately circumstances played out in the way the government was travelling at the time, I believed then and I still believe the case that the change was necessary for us to succeed at that next election. I would wish that perhaps we’d, after that change, hit the ground running a little more emphatically and that perhaps all that we started to achieve in Malcolm’s second year as prime minister, we’d really bitten the bullet on in his first year and I think that might have put us in a better position when we went to that 2016 election than ultimately proved to be the case.

Michelle Grattan: So, what are your relations with Tony Abbott like now, and more generally, how enduring can relationships and friendships be in politics, even on your own side? Have you lost friends during these internal party battles over leadership, over issues?

Simon Birmingham: Tony and I, I think, picked up at least a working relationship again when I was trade minister, and he was great in terms of wanting to put Australia’s interests first in his engagement with the UK and India and helping to achieve FTAs and so we had some long discussions at that stage. I don’t, frankly, expect Tony to ever forgive me or people who played a big role in that, to be booted out of the prime minister’s office, is something that of course, you’re never going to be happy about and so, I understand his perspective there. But we have a functional and working relationship now and that’s to his credit. But on the whole I think I’ve been lucky. You know, I invented something that I anecdotally call coffee with Mitch or public coffee which was that Mitch Fifield and I tended to be on opposite sides of a couple of votes over the years. And I’d always say to Mitch, let’s go and have coffee at Aussies so the press gallery and the colleagues and everybody else can see that even though they know, on this ballot or that – and it wasn’t the Malcolm-Tony one clearly – but on others, even though they know we’re falling on opposite sides of the ledger that we’re still mates and we still get on. And that’s the case with many others. Jamie Briggs who’s returning in a less public way to working with politics; Briggsy was a big loser of course out of the change in prime minister, but we remain very close mates. And I think it’s important to find the way to keep those relationships. But you’ve got to be honest and acknowledge the hurt, the pain, the difficulty that can come from those ballots and, and work it through like any friends do when you have those tough times.

Michelle Grattan: Well, what about your relationship with Peter Dutton? Because obviously over the years you would have been on different sides on all sorts of things to Peter Dutton. How has your relationship been with Peter Dutton as leader?

Simon Birmingham: It’s been good, Michelle. You know, Peter hasn’t done everything that I might have argued for around the shadow cabinet table and no leader will you ever win every argument with. But I do feel listened to by Peter. I do have confidence that although he may have more of a Queensland conservative lens to his thinking than my more liberal thinking, in the end you know Peter is much more pragmatic, practical and down to earth in the politics that he brings forward. He is not an ideologue. And, I think he has valued my counsel. I think it has had influence at times and I’m certainly not walking away because of Peter, or any qualms I have about the possibility of working with Peter in the future. In fact, I would have relished the opportunity to be part of, you know, his leadership team in government, if it had come about and I’ll have some regrets if he wins and I’m not part of that, but I’m going forward positively into a new life.

Michelle Grattan: Well, just speaking of regrets and looking back over issues, what’s your biggest regret in terms of issues?

Simon Birmingham: I wish we had better landed policies and direction around how Australia responds to climate change. It has been the thread right throughout my career of division and politicking and I think the biggest missed opportunity was probably the National Energy Guarantee, which Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg came so very close to landing and to legislating. It of course didn’t just address the emissions side, but also really sought to address the reliability proposition. It’s actually a mechanism that could have strongly supported a nuclear energy market, for example, as well, and I wish that we had found the way to see that through because I think our policy landscape would be much better today had that been the case.

Michelle Grattan: Well, in fact, it ended up delivering a mortal blow, didn’t it, to Malcolm Turnbull.

Simon Birmingham: It did end up being the piece where history, in a sense, repeated itself that Malcolm first lost the leadership in opposition over those negotiations with the government of the day or Rudd government over climate policy and of course then lost his own prime ministership and the leadership a second time over his policy proposals around climate policy. But I think the thing about the National Energy Guarantee was that it wasn’t seeking to be an economy-wide carbon price; It was certainly not a carbon tax; It was a clever, sophisticated energy market mechanism that really could’ve helped us address emissions, reliability and ultimately affordability in the smartest possible way and it’s an enduring loss that it didn’t get there.

Michelle Grattan: On a lighter note, can you share with our listeners a couple of the quirkier political moments that you’ve seen, the sort of stories that you’ll be talking about at dinner parties in Adelaide in the years to come?

Simon Birmingham: Well, I think a couple. One, you know, one quite light-hearted and the other with a serious edge to it. It is known I joined Scott Morrison for a dinner with Donald Trump in Osaka, on the margins of the G20 after Scott’s 2019 election victory. And I do remember during that dinner, at one stage Trump was saying: “You know, you guys in Australia, you’re a long way away from America. But, you know, you’re not as far away as those guys in New Zealand”. And we all kind of sat there thinking to ourselves, which way do you fly to Australia? Because we generally, if we were coming from the US, would fly over New Zealand to get to Australia. But of course, we’re all far too polite to correct the then and now incoming president.

The more serious one, and I partly referenced it when I acknowledged Rebekha Sharkie, the Member for Mayo in my valedictory speech, was during school funding debates and seeking to get that legislation through the Senate. Jacqui Lambie, who was then a very new Senator, Jacqui was really kind of one of the key final swing votes and she was coming under huge pressure from the Catholic school lobby and the education union at the time, and eventually Bec Sharkie and Cathy McGowan went around to Jacqui’s office and said, Jacqui, you’ve just got to go down to the Senate and tell people where you stand. And once you just put it on the public record, this is what I’m doing and I’m not budging all of those pesky lobbyists and all of the phone calls and all of the pressure and even almost bullying, it’ll all go away.

And I remember being in the Senate and really nervous, kind of, you know, where’s Jacqui? What’s happening? And then suddenly I saw her walk into the chamber, literally accompanied by Rebekha Sharkie and Cathy McGowan, and I sort of heaved this big sigh of relief that they had helped to get her over the line and when I look back on those reforms that I’m very proud of in getting the Gonski school funding in a more principled state and consistent with those recommendations, I think it’s also the fact that the independents like Bec and Cathy and Jacqui were persuaded of those benefits that I hope was a demonstration at the time of how right we were to pursue them.

Michelle Grattan: Now, you’re currently the de facto head of the moderates within the Liberal Party. Are you disappointed that the voices of the moderates have become much weaker in the party in recent years? And why do you think this is so? And how do you see their future?

Simon Birmingham: I think the last election in particular, not only sent us a clear message of dissatisfaction from more moderate-aligned, you know Teal-leaning seats. And I don’t just mean the ones that the Teals won, but also seats like Bennelong and Tangney and Boothby that are inner urban and have a Teal tinge to them. It sent us, you know, clear messages from those seats, but simultaneously left the party room less well equipped to respond to those messages because we lost some people who were really about to come into their prime and their own. People like Trent Zimmerman and Tim Wilson, Katie Allen and Dave Sharma, they were becoming much stronger and more authoritative voices in the party room, who I have missed greatly in this term and where I think we would have been better placed having them there. And I just hope that coming into the next election, where obviously some like Tim and Katie are running again, but in other cases where we’ve got some great new candidates in different seats who I think are true custodians of the liberal tradition in the Liberal Party, I hope that we can win those seats back and restore some of that balance in the party room.

Michelle Grattan: I just wonder, though, to what extent the Liberal Party has changed fundamentally over the years and really has a new constituency. Peter Dutton, of course, is targeting very strongly the outer suburban vote, the old Howard battlers, I guess you’d say. And that does raise the question, doesn’t it, of how can the party simultaneously appeal to those people but try to win back the people who last time voted Teal?

Simon Birmingham: Yeah, I think the next couple of elections are going to be, very clearly, a crucial test of those different theses as to whether voters have permanently changed in terms of the demographics and where they line up, or whether it was a more extreme effect of the last election. We’re clearly seeing global changes and global dissatisfaction with often major parties. We’ve seen huge disruption within the major parties clearly in the US. But you look at, for example, in France, the rise of Macron, who was from neither of the traditional major parties in France, completely broke the two-party model in France and yet, of course, in recent times it’s now Macron’s own party that is breaking and looking like being eliminated. So, we live in an era where there is, potentially much greater change. Nothing is necessarily forever. But I also, again, caution against the catastrophising. I remember shortly before I was elected that former Senator Chris Puplick, wrote a book called Is the Party Over? And of course, that was meant to be the potential prognosis of the death knell for the Liberal Party, and particularly the Liberal Party, as a party of liberalism. And as it turned out, it was far from it. Shortly thereafter, we were to go on and enjoy very long periods in government federally and indeed in Chris’ own state.

Michelle Grattan: Well, maybe some would say you could write a book now about whether the era of the major parties is heading in the direction at least of being over, because people do seem to be wanting options other than the major parties, don’t they? Whether it’s the minor players like the Greens or this rise of community candidates, which of course is not confined to the Teals. Do you think we’re going to see more and more crossbenchers in future parliaments? And what does this mean? Will, we see a string of minority governments?

Simon Birmingham: I think it’s impossible to, you know, particularly predict into a string-type scenario. Historically, we’ve seen independents are hard to move, but we’ve also never historically seen so many independents and a coordinated independent movement. I think there is a real test there for the Teals and their backers. If, and I hope this isn’t the case, but if they were to win their seats at the next election, let alone if they were to expand upon it, then at some stage I think the pressure really does have to come on as to whether or not they are going to form into a coherent political party and coordinated movement. Because our system is not built for government to be formed reliant upon lots of independents. Even the countries elsewhere around the world where broader coalition governments are common, still rely on having parties of more common ideological disposition and identified consistent policies to be able to go and negotiate the forming of a government. I think we would be poorly served if we find ourselves in the future having a government trying to find its way with lots of independents and needing to somehow negotiate separately with each, rather than having at least a common, consistent, philosophically-based party structure to engage with.

Michelle Grattan: I just want to ask you a couple of questions with your Foreign Affairs spokesman hat on. How do you think Australia, the Australian government, should deal with the new Trump administration in the coming months, especially given the threat we face about tariffs being imposed and other quite difficult questions facing the alliance?

Simon Birmingham: Michelle, I think it’s a combination of clearly being quite forthright and strategic in the arguments that we mount and ensuring that they’re clear, concise and simple. So, I remember at that dinner with Donald Trump that I referenced before, we did get into a debate about the trade balance between our countries. And I ultimately, you know, reached into some of the documents I had and handed a graph across the table that showed for how long and how significantly the US has had a trade surplus over Australia and passed it across the table saying, Mr. President no, it’s not the case that the US is in any trade deficit with Australia – it is very clear that it’s been a long and sustained period of surplus for the US. And whilst I don’t think trade relations should be about the binary of surplus v deficit, in the end if that’s what’s going to sway his thinking, we’ve got to pitch it in that regard. But we also have to understand the depths and the sentiments of players there. I also recall being in Ottawa for a minilateral meeting of trade ministers, clearly from Canada, but elsewhere from Asia and Europe as well and I was scheduled to go from Ottawa through to Washington DC on my way back to Australia, and Joe Hockey rang me while I was in Ottawa and said, mate, your New Zealand counterpart came here on his way to Ottawa, and he asked to get the same exemptions to the steel and aluminium tariffs that Australia’s got. And Bob Lighthizer, who was Trump’s equivalent of a trade minister went nuts at the New Zealanders and marched them out of his office saying, well, you’re not getting it and Australia never should have either. And Joe said to me, mate, I think it might be best if you have a family emergency and head back to Australia. And so, lo and behold, I took Joe’s wise advice and counsel; made my way straight back to Australia, making apologies to those in D.C, I was meant to see because it was the right advice that, you know, we had ourselves in the position where we wanted the country to be with Trump, with his chief of staff, with the White House and that had secured us the policy outcome that mattered and we didn’t need to do anything that might risk provoking others in the administration who could cause trouble. So, I think it’s critical to ensure that we are, as a country, strategic in how we mount the arguments; to whom we mount the arguments and make sure we’re putting the strongest foot forward at all times.

Michelle Grattan: On the Middle East, the Coalition government signed Australia up to the International Criminal Court. In light of the court’s arrest warrant for the Israeli Prime Minister, do you think in retrospect, this was a mistake and a future Coalition government should look at leaving the Court? And in general, do you think that the Coalition has been too one-sided in this conflict in the Middle East?

Simon Birmingham: Michelle, I think the International Criminal Court is an interesting example now of the real challenge that exists in terms of global strategic competition. You’ve got a couple of rulings over the last couple of years; one in relation to Putin, that countries like South Africa, you know, clearly have great disregard for; and one in relation to Netanyahu that countries like the US clearly have great disregard for. So, I think it does highlight that extent of strategic competition and a thing that we as a country are going to have to think carefully about, along with many other Western liberal democracies, is how we stand true to our values and in defence of our democratic partners, but also avoid what is often used by China and others against us, which is that we are frequently accused of being judgemental and lecturing. And the analogy of that, or the example of that is as Shadow Foreign Minister, on any given day, in any given week, the media would have lapped up and frequently asked me for comments about what was happening in terms of India’s democracy, or what the risks of the new Indonesian president may be, and all of those very sensitive issues. And in the end, of course, it’s entirely counterproductive for me or for Penny or for anybody in either of our positions to run that type of commentary about how the systems of other governments are operating and what’s happening in those. Because ultimately, what we want is for Australia to be in the strongest possible position of our relationships with those countries and not to necessarily be sitting in judgement of them. But of course, we still need to preserve the space to be clear about our values when it comes to human rights frameworks and the like. So, it’s a very challenged time, a difficult balance. And the situation in the Middle East and the tragedy that has unfolded there has only made that harder. I don’t think in standing strongly beside Israel and clearly against terrorists and the need for them to be defeated and Iran to be held to account, that we have been in any way too one-sided. I do think perhaps the debate has only ever continued to sit in the here and now. And I think it’s important to also be clear that in the long-term, there needs to be an outcome for Palestinians that is just for them that gives security for them and that includes addressing difficult issues where Israel’s policies have been quite counterproductive on things like settlements, for example and that, you know, that asked the right questions I’d have been clear in terms of that view all along as well.

Michelle Grattan: So, on the Court, do you think we should not desert the Court, not seek to leave the Court?

Simon Birmingham: I think we want to see, as a country, international architecture survive. It’s going through a period of immense strain. The mere fact that the UN can’t put Blue Beret peacekeepers in any new part of the world, because the Security Council will veto everything, and that there is such dysfunction, shows how deep that strain is. But for the time being, dialogue and places for discussion and debate are better than not. And in those circumstances, we’re better off trying to preserve what’s there. But in years to come, we’re going to need to be adaptable and that may mean reconsidering the value of some of these pieces of institutional architecture if they can’t be preserved in a functional way.

Michelle Grattan: Just finally, I want to circle back to the Liberal Party. And perhaps the hardest question of all. How can the party attract more quality candidates and especially more women candidates?

Simon Birmingham: I think at some stage the party is going to have to look beyond its membership base. We were built as a mass member organisation. In my own state back in the Menzies and Playford eras, you were talking about a party that had 30, 40, 50,000 members at a time when the population of SA was much, much smaller. Now you can well and truly knock a zero off the end of that proposition, even with a much larger population. Now political parties aren’t alone there. The same is true of nearly all membership-based organisations across our society, as people’s behaviours and interests have changed. But it creates a fundamental problem for political parties, because we’re choosing people from a narrower base who are making that choice. And I think there’s much to be said around the wisdom of crowds making decisions about candidates and their merits, and that somehow you know, we need to find a model, whether it is through use of citizens’ juries type approaches; whether it is a mould or model of some type of primary; or things that bring more of the local small business people, the local charitable organisation leaders, the local sporting and multicultural organisation leaders into our pre-selection processes to help us get a diversity of candidate, a diversity of thought and ensure that we are better connected to the community in the future, which our membership used to provide, but which smaller numbers of members detach us from now. I wrote a reform paper for my home division, the South Australian Liberal Party, a year, 18 months ago. I can’t say that it’s gone anywhere. But I hope that it can get dusted off one day, particularly some of those concepts of how we revisit our membership model to ensure that we give the community the say and the engagement that Robert Menzies envisaged us to have when he founded the party.

Michelle Grattan: Simon Birmingham, thank you so much for talking with us today and sharing some insights and some nice stories. I’m sure that your colleagues, and indeed your political opponents here in Canberra will be watching your new career but wishing you every success in it as well. That’s all for today’s Conversation Politics podcast. Thank you to my producer, Ben Roper. We’ll be back with another interview soon, but goodbye for now.