FIVE years ago when Mathias Cormann took office, assuming the Senate seat vacated by his Liberal predecessor Ian Campbell, the political landscape was very different.
At that point his party, the Liberals, was coming to the end of its fourth term under the leadership of John Howard in Canberra while at home, in Western Australia, it was in opposition, with few giving it much hope of an imminent return to power.
Despite those very different times, Senator Cormann’s maiden speech hit on contemporary issues that would not look out of place in a speech today.
“One of our greatest challenges in Western Australia is a lack of people, not just workers with select skills but people of all skills, including people whose only skill is a willingness to work in WA,” he told the Senate in his first speech, delivered on August 15 2007.
This could easily stand up today, albeit the specific subject around which he was talking was his concern about the threat to the industrial relations reforms introduced by the Howard government, which were being targeted by the union-backed Labor opposition.
Other subjects he raised, also with slightly different contexts, still resonate today – infrastructure challenges, GST allocations, and carbon controls.
“The growth Western Australia is experiencing is a great opportunity for the nation; however, it also comes with significant challenges, particularly when it comes to keeping up with all the necessary capital and social infrastructure requirements,” Senator Cormann said.
Of the GST, he stated in his maiden speech: “The issue I am raising is not one of parochial self-interest but of the underlying dynamic in the system by which GST payments are allocated to the states.”
“There is a school of thought that it is essentially a bit like a large welfare program, with all the typical distortional effects that come with that.
“It takes from productive areas such as Western Australia and redistributes to areas in decline. In so doing it redistributes scarce funds from high to low areas of return, encourages consumption over investment and discourages mobility and job creation.
“The system, in my view, needs adjusting.”
And with regard to greenhouse gas emissions, bearing in mind the then federal coalition government had a policy to introduce a carbon-trading scheme.
“Going forward we need to remain vigilant against pursuing one-policy-fits-all measures that fail to recognise our unique capacity, particularly in Western Australia, to use more energy and reduce global greenhouse gas emissions at the same time.”
While calling Senator Cormann prescient might be overstating the case, it would be fair to say that even if some of the context has changed these issues remain at the forefront of Australian politics; and he has kept highlighting them, even though the political tables in both Canberra and Perth turned after his maiden speech.
It is also worth noting that Senator Cormann is a politician who is not just ‘on message’ in opposition in Canberra.
Some observers credit him with influencing a shift in the state Liberal Party – from the cosy position it had with (then) new Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd, to a more combative stance that emerged in 2010 when Premier Colin Barnett became hostile to Canberra.
This hostility was founded on several issues, including the GST funding arrangements, the potential for a resources rents tax, and various laws that were impeding WA’s ability to develop its resources wealth.
Senator Cormann politely declines to talk about his own influence, leaving that to others, but in an interview with WA Business News he is clearly as on top of his subject as observers have noted, none more so than when discussing key federal Labor policies – the mining tax and the carbon tax.
He hopes that will earn him a place in Tony Abbott’s team if the Liberals take power in Canberra, expressing a desire to continue in the fields of finance and economics where he has been focused as an opposition spokesman.
But it is not just being able to talk the talk that has gotten the senator to where he is today.
He has a background that gives him a breadth of knowledge about the workings of government, industry and his own party few could match.
As a recently arrived immigrant in the early 1990s, and faced with challenges converting his Belgian legal qualifications into something that would be accepted by Australian law practices, he became involved in the world of politics working as an adviser to then federal justice and customs minister Chris Ellison. He also worked in the government of former premier Richard Court during the 1990s.
Between 2003 and 2007 he stepped into the private sector with WA health insurer HBF, taking general manager roles with different divisions of the not-for-profit group.
At the party level, he was elected senior vice-president of the Perth Division in 2000, state vice-president in 2003 and then served as state senior vice-president from 2004 to 2008.
Most observers believe this period as a party stalwart rising up through the divisional levels has given him a powerbase that helps him assert his views with confidence. He is close to state cabinet minister Peter Collier, who is also seen as a major numbers man.
While Senator Cormann bats away questions on his influence in this regard, he believes that participating in lay side of the political machinery is an important part of the journey to politics – a career which has little else in the way of formal training.
“A level of involvement in the Liberal Party should be some part of your effective training,” Senator Cormann told WA Business News.
“It is not about 10 or 20 years working through the numbers game.
“Before you can become effective in taking the fight to the Labor Party you have to show you can develop, articulate and win an argument.”
Clearly the training worked.
Observers suggest there are few people who can win an argument like Senator Cormann.
The senator, who has his Perth office in Exchange Plaza, believes WA has been under-represented in Canberra for some time and hopes to change that with his colleagues.
He believes it is more than possible to do this from the Senate, dismissing suggestions he might one day seek a lower house seat.
“I am hopeful in the next coalition government that there will be a stronger WA presence at a senior level that will help shape the national agenda,” he said.
“If the policy settings are in place for WA to keep growing, that will be in our national interest.”