At Joe Hockey's final meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, the President was 'asking a lot of questions about the bushfires' | MattKnott with the story of the final meeting and on how Joe Hockey remade himself into Australia's Trump whisperer
Together Hockey and Turnbull decided to approach Trump as they would a famous late Australian media mogul.
"He is verbal, visual, he's not a technocrat, there is a lot of gut instinct there. And Kerry Packer respected you more if you were honest and frank without being sycophantic. It's the same with Trump." Mulvaney had met Hockey through his work spruiking an Australia-style asset recycling scheme. The pair hit it off.
Mulvaney says Hockey's gregarious manner has helped him form relationships with senior figures in Washington that are not available to most ambassadors. "When we were going through the analysis here on the tariffs Joe had the ability to pick up the phone, call people at every level of government and have a direct conversation with them. If, say, the Malaysian ambassador had called me and said 'xyz' I wouldn't know who that was. It would be a different type of conversation. The flow of information is what good diplomacy is about. It was a highlight of his service here.
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