On deciding to get into student politics

… it was simply a movie ticket he was seeking. He’d popped down to the [University of Sydney’s] Student Representative Council, where the woman at the front counter had dismissed his query. He thought she was rude. She probably thought he was an upstart, but Joe was furious. His fees were paying her salary and that meant she was in his service. ‘I would have liked her to be nice to me,’ Joe says, ‘so I thought I should give politics a go.’

On almost quitting politics because John Howard offered him a portfolio he considered to be a demotion after the 2001 election, rather than the finance portfolio he coveted

John Howard had just offered [Hockey] the tourism and small business portfolio … “But you’re demoting me,” Joe fired. “I’m not,” Howard said … “If you don’t like it, you can go and cool your heels on the backbench,” the prime minister told him.

“Well maybe I should,” Joe said, before Howard gave him 30 minutes to think about it.

… He called [wife] Melissa at work and told her he’d just been shafted by the prime minister … Would Melissa like to take up one of many job offers she had received from overseas? “I could get a job with [Citibank boss] Sandy [Weill] in New York,” he told her.

“I was going to go,” Joe says. [After an hour and advice from both his wife and then treasurer Peter Costello he decided to stay, finally phoning Howard].

Howard was slightly taken aback at Joe’s initial reaction to his offer … by the time Joe called Howard back he was contemplating withdrawing his offer. Joe made his call in the nick of time.

On being minister for human services and having to fill out his own government’s form to claim the non-means-tested baby bonus when his first child was born in July 2005

Joe began to rant and rave, his arms flailing around him. Why did he need to provide his income details and his travel history for past years to get the baby bonus? And what was this about how many times his partner had been in and out of the country? She ran a bloody international business, he yelled. “This is a non-means-tested payment.” … By the time their second born … arrived in December the following year, in 2006, the 29-page form was gone.)

On inadvertently smoking a joint while trekking the Kokoda trail

At the halfway point, at a little village called Efogi, the group dragged their feet into camp at about 5pm one afternoon. Local villagers came out to see them, and Joe, as always was mucking around. One of them gave him a cigarette, which he quickly enjoyed. Joe started to feel slightly better. David Koch looked over, realising immediately that Joe was enjoying a marijuana joint. “Do you know what you are smoking?” he asked. “I don’t know what it is,” Joe quipped back, “but it’s pretty good.”

On how Peter Costello asked him to be deputy Liberal leader after Costello challenged Malcolm Turnbull for the Liberal leadership in 2009, and how Costello says the offer never happened

Joe and Costello met for dinner … at La Rustica in Kingston, at Costello’s invitation. “I want you to be deputy,” Joe heard him say. “It was at a table in the middle of Kingston where everyone could see,” Joe says. “He said he was going to move, [that] it’s got to be dealt with – I’m ready to lead – will you be my deputy?” Joe jumped at the chance … But the offer made over dinner never eventuated. Without talking to Joe about the plan again, Costello later announced his retirement plans. (Brendan Nelson says he remembers Joe relaying the conversation to him. It is written in Joe’s diary “Dinner with Costello at La Rustica – 10/3/2009” … Costello says it never happened.

On how Hockey complained to Rupert Murdoch that the Australian wasn’t praising his 2012 'End of the age of entitlement' speech

The criticism was swift and fast, including from within his own party over the timing of his speech, and certainly sections of the media, including the Australian, which didn’t show the enthusiasm Joe expected. Later he ran into Rupert Murdoch. “I said, ‘what the hell is the Australian doing?’ He was appalled,” Joe says. But the speech also wrapped up a new image of Joe. He was now seen as a hard-head. Avuncular Joe was gone.

On the ‘cigarette paper’ agreement with Tony Abbott

[After being surprised by Abbott’s ‘captain’s call’ on the paid parental leave scheme] the two met in Abbott’s office in parliament house. “We sort of had a heart to heart,” Joe says … out of the meeting came a line both men have uttered many times since – that the pair would not have more than a ‘cigarette paper’ between them on policy, that they would support each other publicly and leave any stoush for behind closed doors.

On the inception of the medical research fund, announced in the 2014 budget

The big piece of good news in the budget – the establishment of a medical research fund – had come from Joe, after a walk around Woolwich dock in Sydney. One thought led to another as he reflected on the old seawalls, which had been built in the 1800s as a long term investment. Joe liked the idea of paying it forward. Maybe we could facilitate structural change, he thought, if the government could prove to the public that it was paying the savings forward for something that would improve their lives in the future, such as medical research. Soon after, around the decision-making table, it would become the 5-cent coin in the Christmas cake that refused to rise; the sunshine that could wrap the budget coverage in the warmth its authors believed it deserved.