Free Hockey: Not Your Average Joe by Madonna King

most memorable lifelong moment as standing in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza at sunset in 1982; his favourite food was okra beans, his favourite band Genesis and his favourite singer Phil Collins. Rachel Ward topped his list as favourite actress, with Abbott and Costello’s Join the Army his favourite movie. Ben Chifley was listed as his hero and when asked who the person he’d most like to meet would be, he answered ‘a banking and finance lawyer that can play rugby’. Why? ‘So she could fill in for me whilst I get on with my politics.’ Joe was full of himself and his own importance, and his whole team was poised to pounce when a seat looked like becoming vacant.
    His presidency was effective, by any standard. His team restructured the policy committee, grew membership by 50 per cent and left the budget in surplus. Joe said what he thought, baiting the conservatives with his support for compulsory student unionism, and his acceptance of tobacco sponsorship for the magazine. ‘He was so single-minded. He didn’t worry too much about the criticism; it was all part of a greater plan – to go as far as he could go,’ Hingerty says. But there was no doubt that while Joe focused on a public role, he was helped by the work ethic of his three vice-presidents, who carried the day-to-day load. ‘He had the highest media profile that any state president had had. He courted it. He was an ambitious person,’ Zimmerman says. ‘But Joe was not strong on the administration of the movement and some of the nitty-gritty that came with it. I don’t think there would have been a single person in the Young Liberals or the Liberals who did not know and expect him to seek pre-selection. He stood out. Joe’s always had that something that pulls you out from the pack.’
    Certainly he skated through the ranks of the Young Liberals, from branch policy, vice-president and secretary of the Killara Young Liberals to a delegate of the Young Liberals Council, policy vice-president, a member of the Young Liberal federal executive to NSW divisional president. The wind was behind his sails, helped by a talented executive, a self-sought high media profile and the patronage of Don Harwin. The national presidency of the Young Liberals beckoned in early 1992. It was the prize at this stage, providing a seat on the federal executive of the Party, and Joe and his backers arrived for the Melbourne convention at the Hilton hotel full of hope and expectation. It turned into an ugly conference. A battle between conservative and moderate states enveloped policy debate, and animosity saturated every discussion. Petty factional politics and bad manners meant speakers were ignored, humiliated or boycotted by delegates. Stephen Forshaw, the ACT’s Young Liberal candidate who was employed as the press secretary to the ACT Opposition leader Trevor Kaine, arrived at the conference thinking he didn’t stand a chance of getting the top job, although he was struck by one good omen. He was allocated a room on the same floor as the entire West Indian cricket team. ‘I had all sorts of interesting people coming and going at all hours of the night,’ he says. His room had originally been allocated to Malcolm Marshall, their lead strike bowler. ‘I got to my room and there was a fruit basket with a note – Dear Mr Marshall, welcome to the Hilton .’
    It wasn’t until the early hours on the morning of the ballot that Forshaw thought he might be a player. He, like many, had just assumed Joe Hockey from NSW would be appointed to the post. Other states knew a few months earlier that Joe would be a contender, and believed that despite the number of conservatives, he would walk into the job. It didn’t prove that easy. Joe had the backing of the hard Left of the NSW Party, and that frightened many of the Centre and Right delegates. But the Centre and Right factions couldn’t agree on a candidate to take Joe on. Sandra Mutch was from Western Australia, where the