What has struck me most over the last week has been the matter of leadership identities. There has been the rise of new leaders, the most striking being the election of Richard Di Natale as the new leader of the Greens and in a different way the appointment of former Treasury secretary Ken Henry to chair the National Australia Bank.
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There have also been individuals attempting to reinvent themselves, most notably Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey using the vehicle of the Commonwealth budget. Furthermore the tenor of a long report on former prime minister Kevin Rudd suggested he was reinvigorated as head of the Asia Society Policy Institute based in Boston.
From the perspective of institutions with a fixed image, such as political parties, churches and banks, the appointment of new blood is not just an opportunity for an individual to take on a new position, but a chance for the institution itself to project a new identity. Any appointment will be seen as contributing either to continuity or change. So institutions should be careful who they appoint to their top jobs as their leaders reflect what the institution stands for.
The appointment of Henry, the latest in a long line of Treasury heads to subsequently play a leadership role in one of the major banks, was probably meant to signal continuity. But it may turn out to contain the seeds of change because of Henry's wide social interests in matters such as the environment.
Di Natale's rise has been widely interpreted as signalling a change in what the Greens are about. He has been frequently portrayed as a more middle-of-the-road Greens leader, presenting an opportunity for more effective bridges to be built between the government and a hitherto unco-operative minor party. His election may be an opportunity for the government, but he remains something of an unknown and may surprise.
Change can be of two sorts, both important, either in substance and values or in presentation and image. In a surprising comparison Michael Mullins, the editor of the Jesuit on-line magazine Eureka Street, posed the question "Will new Greens leader Di Natale do a Pope Francis?" What he meant by this seemingly far-fetched question was to suggest that Pope Francis could be a model for Di Natale because as church leader he has managed to maintain the core values of his institution while presenting a quite different, more sensitive public image.
Mullins' line of thinking could be applied more generally to political leaders. Perhaps the question should have been "Will Tony Abbott turn over a new leaf and do a Pope Francis?" Since his near-death experience within his own party the Prime Minister has promised to be a different person. But does that mean he can lead a conservative institution, the Liberal Party, in new consumer-friendly directions? The jury is still out on that possibility.
Individuals can try to reinvent themselves even while remaining in the same position. Abbott and Hockey are attempting to do this by presenting a budget which seeks to shift the image of their party from right-of-centre to moderate centre-right through a mix of more family-friendly policies.
Rudd, on the other hand, has removed himself as far as possible from his previous milieu to give himself the chance not just to be successful in a new niche, but to even put himself in the frame for a much bigger job, secretary-general of the United Nations, in the future. In doing this, according to his Jesuit friend Father Frank Brennan, Rudd has been able to reorient himself towards the belief that he can have a second major career.
The idea of more than one major career in a lifetime is central to understanding all these individuals. Any MP who has had a professional career before entering Parliament, as Di Natale did as a medical practitioner, puts themselves in this situation. Any senior public servant who switches to a second career in the private sector, as Henry has done, is in the same situation. Not everyone can make the move successfully, especially after a first career of a different kind that lasts decades.
Such change is not easy because the new profession or institution has its own traditional values and structures which impose strict limits on what any newcomer with ideas can do.
Those individuals who are reinventing themselves by changing jobs, such as Di Natale, Henry and even Rudd, have a difficult though manageable task. In their new job they have something of a clean sheet to work on, though they can never leave their previous identity behind altogether.
Di Natale, much less well-known than either Henry or Rudd, has a decent chance to build an identity from scratch. He will be given a fair go by some people for a while, though there will be many Coalition and Labor supporters who will share the idea, though not the angry tenor, of the tweet by Defence Minister Kevin Andrews that it doesn't matter who leads the Greens because it is the party not the leader that matters. What sort of impact Di Natale makes is unpredictable.
More problematic are the chances of those individuals, like Abbott and Hockey, trying to reshape their identities without changing jobs. Many voters will not forget their record, but they still have some chance to reshape their identity. If Tony Abbott does manage to do a Pope Francis he will satisfy the hard core of his party by maintaining its values while becoming more attractive to the wider community by putting a better face on them.
John Warhurst is an emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University and a former chairman of the Australian Republican Movement. John.Warhurst@anu.edu.au
