Since leaving Canberra four years ago, Arthur Sinodinos has been slowly stepping into the public limelight he so masterfully shunned for the best part of a decade as the powerful shadow of former Prime Minister John Howard.

I always acted on the basis that our backs were to the wall. In government, if you have that sort of mentality you should be able to avoid becoming too arrogant or overreaching.

Arthur, as he was known in the corridors of power, has become a regular on the corporate speaker’s circuit, sharing his insight into national politics and public policy.

During this year’s federal election campaign, he was a regular political commentator in print and television. In the immediate aftermath, he was the Coalition’s go-to man for the three independents on parliamentary reform, and he continues to write op-ed columns in The Australian and make the odd media appearance. That’s in between his day job as a senior manager for business and private banking with the National Australia Bank and his role as an independent director on several boards.

You can take the man out of politics, but Sinodinos’ passion for national affairs hasn’t waned since he left the PM’s office and moved to Sydney in 2006 to pursue a career in the corporate sector.

He has been touted as a potential candidate for a number Liberal seats, including Malcolm Turnbull’s electorate of Wentworth before the former Liberal leader’s change of heart. But for now, the pragmatic Sinodinos seems content to stay on the sidelines.

“I had ruled out being a candidate this election,” he says.

“We had a bub on the way and financially, we’re doing ok, but I don’t think we are secure enough to leave the family in the lurch and go running into politics.

“When I left in 2006, I’d had a pretty long stint in politics and I was keen to get out while I was still young enough to do something else. In some ways it’s tempting (to run for office) and in other ways it’s not, but we’ll wait and see. You never rule anything out. I learnt that a long time ago.”

Sinodinos was happy to sit out the last election and hone his new role as a political commentator, particularly with a young family – his son Dion is eight, while daughter Isabella Sofia was born last June.

“I quite enjoyed not having to be on the road for five or six weeks as we used to be. I used to cross the days off one by one during election campaigns. The running around, particularly once you have a family, just got to me,” he recalls.

With a good political nose, economics background and bureaucratic experience from his days in Treasury, Sinodinos is credited with much of the effectiveness of Howard’s office.

One of Howard’s closest strategists, he was known for his unflappability and a sense of humour – and was considered one of the most covertly powerful men in Australia.

Herald Sun national political editor Phillip Hudson says the PM’s chief of staff job is a stressful, thankless role, but Sinodinos is considered the doyen, skilled at talking to people and watching the Prime Minister’s back.

“After the PM, he was considered to be the most important person in the Government, even though he was not elected and did not sit in the Cabinet. Lobbyists, and even MPs who wanted to get the PM’s ear would first try to convince Arthur. And in the corridors of power he was known simply by his first name,” Hudson says.

The soft-spoken economist is far more modest and sober in his assessment.

“I never saw myself as having some sort of mandarin or grand vizier role when we were in government,” Sinodinos reflected on a recent break from a speaking engagement in Melbourne.

“Sure, I had power as an extension of the PM, but you could never just order people to do things, whether it was ministers or backbenchers or whoever. You had to be able to bring people along and persuade them. I always acted on the basis that our backs were to the wall. In government, if you have that sort of mentality you should be able to avoid becoming too arrogant or overreaching.”

It’s the sort of approach he says Kevin Rudd could have benefitted from.

“Howard always saw his job as persuading people. I don’t think at times he was happy about it because it meant spending a lot of time on people. He understood at the end of the day, that something only sticks if people have ownership of it.
While he was a strong leader and a strong head of government, he knew how to use the Cabinet process to
get that sort of ownership and collective support for decisions, and I think that is something that Kevin never really grasped.”

Sinodinos, 53, was an unlikely candidate for a role in the inner circle of a conservative PM.

While he looks the model of conservatism, sporting a dark suit, red tie and trademark white-collared, blue and white- striped shirt, his Greek migrant, working class roots are at odds with the elite private school boys club from which the Coalition usually recruits.

His Kefalonia-born father, Dionysis, was a merchant mariner who settled in Newcastle working on big ships. His mother, Californian, arrived in Sydney after the 1953 earthquake. Sinodinos recalls he didn’t speak much English until he went to school.

He had a close affiliation with the Newcastle Greek Orthodox church and a keen interest in politics and current affairs. After graduating in Economics at Newcastle University, he ended up in Canberra’s Department of Finance in 1979.

Sinodinos describes himself as a conservative at heart, influenced more by his mother than his more moderate father, who was away from home for weeks at a time.

“My father wasn’t a really active unionist but he was a supporter of the seaman’s union of Australia. I remember them being quite a left wing union in those days. My mother was more right wing, partly influenced by her experiences in Greece during the civil war.

“He was never really strong in pushing his political views, but with both of them it was more instinctive. It just reflected their life experiences, they were very pragmatic in that sense.”

Sinodinos worked as an adviser to Howard both in Opposition and in government, where he became the longest serving chief of staff to an Australian prime minister (1997-2006).
In 1997, he met his future wife Elizabeth, a Sydney lawyer who was working in the Department of Foreign Affairs. They married in 2000.

“We met through Greek things as it turned out,” he says.

Sinodinos had been an active member of the Canberra Greek community, including a stint as president between 1993 and 1997.
Sinodinos is proud that the community completed a number of significant projects during his tenure, including the St Nicholas aged care home and childcare and pre-school centre.

“They were an important service to a community, at the one end trying to educate young kids and give them a grounding in Greek language and culture and at the other end helping people in their final years, when having ethno-specific facilities makes them feel more comfortable.”

He says the internal politics were
also a good training ground.

“If you can deal with Greek community politics, Labor-Liberal politics would be
a breeze.”

Sinodinos may be living in the corporate world, but he is never too far from his old stomping ground.
He was in Canberra last month for the launch of Howard’s memoir, Lazarus Rising, in which his name comes
up regularly.

“I get a few mentions but really,
it’s Howard’s book, it’s Howards’
government and I was happy to help out, but I wasn’t spending every day thinking how will this look in his book one day. You don’t approach it like that.”

As for the controversial public spat over the leadership that ensued, Sinodinos is circumspect.

“My attitude is that they’ve each written a book and had an opportunity to put their views and there is no point in continuing to rake over it.”

He wasn’t surprised by Costello’s comments, “but beyond a certain point it’s better for both of them to put it all behind them now, because it can potentially overshadow the rest of the legacy.”

Does he agree with Costello’s contention that Howard stayed too long?

“By definition if you lose the election, he probably did stay too long. But the real question was whether anyone else could have pulled it out of the fire and, as we’ve seen with the recent election that may not necessarily have been the case, particularly against a fresh challenger.

“What the Liberals did in this last campaign was to remind everybody that Gillard was closely associated with the major decisions of the Rudd government and, of course, that’s exactly the sort of charges they would have levelled at Costello if he had been the successor to Howard in those last few months.”

Vicky Kyriakopoulos is a journalist who has contributed to The Age, Neos Kosmos and a range of other national and international publications.