Eye on Wentworth

BY PAWAN LUTHRA

The stakes are high. A loss in the current by-election in the seat of Wentworth on 20 October can leave Prime Minister Scott Morrison with a tied House of Representatives. With the confidence of former Prime Ministers John Howard and Malcolm Turnbull, the Coalition selected Dave Sharma as their candidate for Wentworth.

The Indian-origin Dave Sharma, who has had a distinguished career in the diplomatic services, has big shoes to fill in the Sydney seat vacated by Malcolm Turnbull. He talks here on Indian Link Radio about his debut in politics, his vision for Australia, and about his own Indian heritage.

PAWAN LUTHRA: Dave Sharma, welcome to Indian Link Radio.

DAVE SHARMA: Good morning Pawan, it’s lovely to be here with you.

PL: Dave, I am keen to explore not only your political views but also a bit more about your Indian links. So let me start with something that touches both of these. You’re a good Indian boy. You topped the state in the HSC and even went to medical school for a bit. But now you’re entering politics. Was politics always on your mind?

Also, why politics?

DS (laughs): That’s a good question, Pawan. You’re right, I am a good Indian boy. I’m a graduate of Law, I even studied Medicine for a year… as you know, all Indian parents want their children to go into one of those two professions.

But that said, politics is not in my family and I wasn’t necessarily expecting to get into politics. Where it’s come from for me, Pawan, is this: the past 20 years - serving

Australia overseas in places like Papua New Guinea, Washington DC and most recently as Ambassador for Israel - has given me a lot of great belief and passion in our country Australia, but also a sense that we need to do more to address some of the challenges we face. Attempting to get into politics in the seat of Wentworth is just about the next chapter of public service for me: helping to keep our country strong and secure, helping to keep our economy growing well, and helping to give opportunities for all Australians just like the opportunities I had (and my father had as well arriving in Australia as a migrant), making sure the country keeps delivering for all its people.

PL: So what are the challenges do you think Australia is facing at the moment?

DS: I think they’re twofold. Firstly the strategic environment around Australia is changing quite significantly: the centre of the global economic and strategic weight is shifting from a transatlantic axis to an Indo-pacific axis. That brings with it many opportunities for Australian trade, and I think we’ve done well in taking advantage of those. But it’s also bringing new uncertainties and new risks. You see that in the changing strategic balance of power in the region and growing assertiveness from some of the countries who are becoming more powerful and demanding a greater say in the affairs of the world and that creates challenges for us. The second challenge, which I particularly became familiar with during my time in Israel, is that the economy is changing. The nature of goods and services that people produce and make countries prosperous is changing: they’re much more information rich and much less physically based, they depend upon a skilled workforce, and are quite knowledge intensive - and I do believe Australia needs to do more to position ourselves to capture some of those industries that are highly skilled and work in some of those industries, and remain a country that has high living standards with a generous social safety net to look after everyone.

PL: Australia has seen 27 years of continuous economic growth, the only country in the world to do so. What else can we be doing on a more practical basis?

DS: You’re right, we’re about to enter our 28th year of uninterrupted economic expansion - the economic growth figures from the last financial year I think are 3.4% which is the highest in the OECD. I think there’s always a risk with thatcomplacency comes with that continued success and we can take continued economic success for granted. The truth of it is that over the years Australia has become a successful and prosperous country because of people working hard, governments making difficult decisions and people tackling policy challenges rather than expecting the economy and the country to run on auto pilot. So I think we need to be looking at the next challenges. What we’ve achieved so far is great, but we always need to be mindful of what might be coming over the horizon. In particular what I’d like to see is the commercialisation and research and development of Australian ideas. Australia has some great universities and some great research minds but we don’t have a very good track record in commercialising these ideas, turning them into commercial propositions and into business plans and business models. Israel does that particularly well. India does that quite well as well and I think we need to learn lessons from countries like these that have a well-developed, innovative start up and entrepreneurial sectors

PL: Dave, we’ll come to politics in a minute but since you touched on the international economic order, do you think Australia is doing enough to engage with India?

DS: No, I think we could always be doing more with India. I think it’s an incredibly important country in the Indo-pacific: it’s growing in size and in wealth, it’s becoming a more significant strategic actor and we have so much in common with India. There’s obviously a large and growing Indian population in Australia, we share the same language, the same love of cricket, and many of the same cultural and literary traditions. So I think it should be a natural relationship. It is in many ways a natural relationship but I don’t think we’ve invested as much in it as we should - there’s always a case to be doing more diplomatically, strategically and commercially with India.

PL: Dave, you gave me a segue into a number of issues with that, but I’ll come back to them in a while. I’d like to talk a bit about local issues first. Internal affairs in your own party at the moment are grabbing the headlines for all the wrong reasons – there’s back-stabbing, destabilising, bullying, the women are rebelling. Why should the people of Wentworth vote for you?

DS: Why I’m getting into politics Pawan, is that I agree people in the public are unhappy about the news they see coming out of Canberra, the internal party games, the intrigues, the inside of politics. They’re wanting to see more of the government working for the people responding to their needs, delivering for them. And certainly talking to voters in Wentworth, they want to see a government addressing issues they’ve identified and challenged, and dealing with that. I believe the new leadership team in the government in Canberra has made a very good start. The new prime minister, the new treasurer, the new deputy prime minister, the other ministers, I do believe, are doing well in addressing the challenges and issues of priority and concern to Australians. And I want to be part of that; I want to help raise the tone of the debate in Canberra, get the government to focus more on the people, and get politics focused more on the people and less focused on politicians.

PL: In an article we did on you some time ago, when you were appointed as Australian Ambassador to Israel, you had said, “My appointment proves that Australia is a meritocracy and even the highest positions are available to all comers.” There is a lot of debate on quotas in politics at the moment. What are your views on the meritocracy vs quotas?

DS: Well it wouldn’t surprise you Pawan, to learn that I’m a big believer in meritocracy. I think my story you referred to there, to go from being a migrant in Australia to an ambassador for Australia within a single generation, is remarkable

- and I think Australia is perhaps the only country in the world in which that sort of a journey would be possible. I think it’s one of the great strengths of Australia that we assess people on their merits and on the content of their character. We don’t need to assign them on the basis of labels or particular attributes. I’ve got three young daughters and I want them to have all the opportunities that I’ve had open to me, open to them as well. I certainly want them to be able to succeed in whatever their chosen profession is. But I’ve also always taught them that they should be assessing other people not on the basis of labels or the categories they belong to, but as individuals with their own strengths and weaknesses and with their own character, with their own integrity. That’s what I very much believe in. Now the Liberal Party does need to do better in terms of female representation, not only in the parliament but in the senior rankings of the party, and at the state and the federal level, I’m firmly of that view. But we’ve also always been a party - and Australia has always been a country - about assessing individuals on their merits and I think we need to keep that firmly in mind as well.

PL: So is there a solution to get more women into the Liberal Party?

DS: I don’t think quotas are the solution to that. I think we need to be looking at everything across the board, and to how we encourage more recruitment of women into the party, into the senior ranks of the membership, into the parliamentary wing of the party, and making sure they find it a