Joe Hockey

As a Liberal party frontbencher and Shadow Treasurer, Joe Hockey was positioning himself in the Liberal party for leadership during 2009. Whilst supporting the then leader Malcolm Turnbull, Hockey was promoting himself as a moderate in the party.

Since this section of our website is about Christians involved in politics, it is mostly concerned with statements that MPs make about Christianity and personal faith.

In November 2009, Joe Hockey gave a speech about religion, Christianity and his personal view on faith. In it he speaks of his training in a school run by the Jesuits, an order in the Roman Catholic church. He also speaks of religious tolerance and not being too 'literal'.

In the speech, Joe Hockey criticises Christians who take a literal view of the Bible:

"I do think that one of the reasons why Christian faith has declined in the Western world is because of the reliance placed on a literal reading of the testaments by church leaders. Such an approach has tangled the Christian faith in a confusion of contradictions. By encouraging literalist analysis of the Bible many churches have inadvertently invited people to question the validity of a faith that seems to be based on questionable facts or outdated prescriptions.....
"Now there are some that will with great conviction, even to this day, argue that all of these things were so. In fact a number of fast growing evangelical Christian churches in Australia take a literalist approach to the scriptures. While most leaders of the older churches, if I can use that term, have moved away from such a position I would argue that there is still an alienating literalism that pervades many faiths and Christianity is not alone in this regard...."

Prior to the 2007 election, Kevin Rudd wrote an article in The Monthly (October 2006) about faith - in the article he also criticised Christians who take the Bible too seriously, especially on the issue of homosexuality.

Speech - "In Defence of God"
Joe Hockey gave this speech (transcript at link above) to the Sydney Institute on November 9, 2009.
A shortened version is on the SMH website - click here.

Commentary:
Joe Hockey Defends God
ABC, 09 November 2009. Audio files available.
ABC Fora says that Joe Hockey "preaches tolerance and faith".

Sugar and spice and all things nice: a safe god for politicians 
Phillip Jensen - the dean of St Andrew's Anglican Cathedral, Sydney.
Sydney Morning Herald, November 14, 2009.

"Joe Hockey has followed his old sparring partner, Kevin Rudd, by going public about religion while serving as a member of the shadow cabinet. 

For Rudd this was an important attempt to regain the Christian credibility of the Labor movement. He argued against the assumption that the conservative side of politics owned the religious vote.

He aimed to show the Christian foundations of Labor and the existence of a Christian within the party.

Rudd startled those commentators who had so wrongly assumed "the religious right" of America had traction in Australia, or that conservative theology meant conservative politics.

It had been a long time since a Labor politician had so openly expressed their Christianity.

Now Hockey has played the same card. He has carefully articulated the place of faith in the secular politics of a multicultural society by confirming his own personal faith.

He has positioned himself as a defender of the faith. Or to be more accurate, like Prince Charles, he positioned himself as a defender of faith.

His explanation of faith has all the appeal of motherhood and apple pie. His god is full of sugar and spice and all things nice. It is the religion of those who have no religion. Warm, positive values that he admits do not have religion as "an essential prerequisite". He admits that his own political values were shaped in part by the agnostic or atheist John Stuart Mill...." 

Bill Muehlenberg has written two articles assessing Joe Hockey's speech:
Biblical Illiteracy in Public Life - 9 November 2009.
Worshipping at the Altar of Tolerance - 10 November 2009. 

Liberal Leadership Challenge

On 1 December 2009, there was a leadership spill in the Liberal Party. It was brought on by a division within the Party over the Rudd government's proposed emissions trading scheme.
Three men ran for election as leader. The then leader Malcolm Turnbull, who supported passing the ETS legislation, Tony Abbott who opposed the ETS - and Joe Hockey who had previously supported it but was proposing some sort of 'middle road' ... if he was elected the MPs could have a 'free vote'. That would have meant the ETS bill being passed. It seemed this was a compromise that actually meant Mr Hockey was not standing by his previous position on the ETS. As a result Tony Abbott announced he would run.

The result?
In the initial vote: Tony Abbott 35, Malcolm Turnbull 26, Joe Hockey 23.
In the run off, Tony Abbott beat Malcolm Turnbull by one vote - 42 votes to 41 votes.
Media report and media conference - click here.