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Mathias Cormann

No other immigrant of German-speaking background has achieved a more influential position in the government of Australia than Mathias Cormann.

Something my friends in Perth always find quite intriguing is that I was taught at primary school in German and at high school first in German and then in French and three years at university in Flemish. [...] In fact, it was not until I was 23, participating in a one-year student exchange program at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, that I actually first learnt how to speak English.[1]

Mathias Cormann
(first speech to the Australian Senate, 15/08/2007)

In his first speech as a senator in the Australian Parliament Cormann referred to his migrant background (noting that his fellow-senators had by then probably noticed his accent), and he told how it always fascinated friends of his in Perth how he had grown up multilingually in Belgium, and how tuition in his Belgian primary school took place in the German language and later on in secondary school firstly in German and later in French.

During his second year at university studying law he drove as a 19-year-old with friends to Berlin, in order to experience first-hand the widespread jubilation in the days after the fall of the Berlin Wall. What he witnessed there apparently contributed to the development of his political views.

Mathias Hubert Paul Cormann was born in 1970 in the German-speaking area of eastern Belgium and grew up in Raeren, a small town there. During the first two decades of his life he spoke hardly any English. English became his fourth language after German, French and Flemish. He is the first senior economics minister in an Australian government whose native language is German. He emigrated from Belgium to Perth in July 1996 after taking a liking to the Western Australian capital on a visit in 1994. Noone in his family or among his friends had been to Australia.[2]

In June 2007 he became a senator for the state of Western Australia in the Australian Parliament.

On 18th September 2013 Senator Cormann was appointed Minister for Finance in the new conservative federal government of Australia, under Prime Minister Tony Abbott. He was the government's official election campaign spokesman for the federal elections of 2013 and 2016.[3]

In November 2014 the German Chancellor Angela Merkel together with the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott established an Australia-Germany Advisory Group. With the aim of further strengthening and deepening the relationship between Germany and Australia, the German and the Australian members of this Advisory Group worked on recommendations in areas such as education, science, research, diversity and integration, trade and energy. These meetings were co-chaired by Australia's Minister for Finance, Senator Mathias Cormann, and the Minister of State in the German Foreign Office, Professor Maria Böhmer.[4][5]

Members and co-chairs of the Australia-Germany Advisory Group, including Mathias Cormann (front row, 4th from left) with Chancellor Angela Merkel (front row, 3rd from left) in July 2015
Photo: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade website, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia licence.

Senator Cormann was awarded in January 2018 Germany's highest civil honour - the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit - for advancing German-Australian relations.[6]

Cormann was acting prime minister for five days from the 21st to the 26th February 2018 when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull travelled to the United States.[7]

In August 2018 Prime Minister Turnbull announced a leadership spill in the Liberal party after he lost the support of many parliamentarians in his party, and a new leader was elected. Many people in the Liberal party consider that Mathias Cormann's decision influenced others in the party. Former Turnbull government minister Craig Laundy, who supported Malcolm Turnbull in the leadership vote, said at a book launch on 20/08/2019: "It all depended on whether we kept Mathias with us. If we get out of that week and we've still got Mathias rock-solid with us, I really think we could have survived..."[8]

He may not have been a plotter from the start but Cormann was soon a player – perhaps the most significant player of all. [9]

Pamela Williams, investigative journalist

Senator Cormann retired from the Australian Parliament at the end of October 2020 and the Federal Government nominated him for the position of Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), based in Paris. The OECD "is an international organisation that works to create policies that promote economic growth and look to improve social and environmental challenges faced globally."[10]

In March 2021 the 37 member-nations of the OECD elected Cormann as the new head of the organisation. He was the first person from the Asia-Pacific region to have the role.[11]

Mathias Cormann as others see him

The political correspondent Niki Savva wrote that a combination of ambition, ability, and forceful personality made Cormann a powerful figure in the government.[12]

The journalist Andrew Probyn wrote of Mathias Cormann: "He has negotiated legislative victories with patience and renowned courtesy." Probyn also referred to him as "the man they call the Cormannator."[13]

The political journalist and academic Michelle Grattan wrote of Cormann's even political temperament in his dealings in the Senate: "In dealing with a Senate crossbench packed with volatile and unpredictable characters surfing atop inflated egos, Senator Cormann displays inexhaustible patience and general good humour."[14]

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