Looks like Donald Trump has finally found an Australian politician he likes (no, not former Ashfield deputy mayor turned next US ambassador to Malaysia Nick Adams).

With the Trump administration’s support, Mathias Cormann has had his mandate as secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development extended for a second five-year term. Cigars all round!

As finance minister in the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments, the Belgian-born Liberal senator for Western Australia had to shrug off global concerns about the Coalition’s recalcitrant approach to emissions reduction and climate policy to land the top gig in 2021. Those concerns were given weight by Cormann’s former boss Malcolm Turnbull, who tried, unsuccessfully, to lobby against him.

There was no dissent against Australia’s Matthias Cormann getting another crack at the OECD role. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Despite being a rank outsider initially, Cormann managed to beat a field of 10 candidates, scraping past Swede Cecilia Malmstrom, who had all the right sort of European credentials, in the final round.

Spurred by a frenetic burst of global lobbying by the then-Morrison government, Cormann went one better than one-time wannabe United Nations boss Kevin Rudd to become the first........

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