Josh Frydenberg’s ambition to be prime minister of Australia still burns brightly it seems, and his two most prominent Liberal Party sponsors, Alexander Downer and Michael Kroger, have both optimistically predicted that his ascension will happen one day — even though he is no longer in the federal Parliament.
Downer at least showed some deference towards Peter Dutton when he told Q+A last Thursday that Frydenberg probably wouldn’t be the next Liberal prime minister, but that he would land the job at some point. Adopting the Joe Biden approach of becoming a first-time national leader at 78 means that Frydenberg, who turns 51 in July, still has 27 years to get the job done.
Unlike Kristina Keneally, we’re still waiting for Frydenberg to do a major post-election interview that might clarify his intentions, but the latest media briefings seem to suggest he’s going to try and cash in corporately for the next three years and then win back Kooyong in 2025.
That will be a lot easier said than done, as Frydenberg was comprehensively thrashed by Dr Monique Ryan who is currently sitting on 53.3% of the two-candidate-preferred vote, which amounts to a staggering buffer of 5569 votes. By way of contrast, Zoe Daniel is currently leading Tim Wilson by 4387 votes in Goldstein, Kate Chaney claimed Curtin over the weekend with a lead of 1943 votes, and Dr Sophie Scamps leads Jason Falinski in Mackellar with a margin of 3709 votes.
The three lower house crossbenchers with the biggest buffers are Greens leader Adam Bandt in Melbourne with a lead of 14,484 votes over Labor, Helen Haines who retained Indi with a lead of 15,444 votes over the Liberals, and Andrew Wilkie in Clark who picked up 70.59% of the two-candidate-preferred vote to score a margin of 25,503 votes over Labor and secure a fifth term. Make that man the speaker!
Kooyong is one of Victoria’s youngest electorates, and Frydenberg also clearly suffered because it has about 6000 more female than male voters and a large cohort of Chinese Australian voters who make up approximately 11% of the electorate’s 113,054 enrolled voters.
In others words, the demographics were strongly against him, and as Mornings on ABC Radio Melbourne presenter Virginia Trioli pointed out over the weekend, he was also hit by the perception that he bagged Victorians during the world’s longest COVID lockdowns.
If spending $3 million-plus on his reelection campaign and having the benefit of incumbency weren’t enough, it’s hard to see how Frydenbeg could ever win Kooyong back, particularly given the impressive start by Dr Ryan, who carries herself in public with the confidence of a seasoned veteran.
The Sunday Age ran a Paul Sakkal feature about Kooyong off page one yesterday, and Dr Ryan did not miss, telling the paper:
“He said I was ‘in bed’ with Labor and the Greens; to me that’s offensive. He repeatedly said that I lied, he called me a fake independent, he never acknowledged my gender and for most of the campaign he wouldn’t say my name. He called me ‘they’, not ‘she’ … I found that demeaning.”
“It was this dystopian vision of Josh looking down at you from every intersection saying ‘keep Josh, keep Josh’, and then at ground level you’ve got my people singing in the rain with their nice teal T-shirts and umbrellas having the time of their life.”
Perhaps the Liberals need to come up with what could be dubbed “the unreal Teal deal” for the 2025 election, where they would agree not to stand candidates in certain teal-held seats in return for Dr Ryan retiring gracefully after a solitary term in Parliament. As if, you say!
If Frydenberg really wants to get back into federal Parliament before 2025, it shouldn’t be hard to find a senator to retire, creating a casual vacancy that can be quickly, cheaply and safely filled without the risk of losing a byelection, as occurred when both Bob Hawke and Malcolm Turnbull quit Parliament after being ousted in leadership challenges.
You don’t need to live in the state you represent in the Senate, so Frydenberg could easily become one of four Liberal senators representing Tasmania. However, his leadership ambitions would need to be put on hold until a return to the lower house was engineered.
As I first suggested in May, after the Kooyong People’s Forum debate on Sky News, a better option would be for Frydenberg to emulate Campbell Newman’s strategy and attempt to lead the Victorian Liberals to the November state election from outside Parliament.
Australia hasn’t had a one-term federal government in more than 70 years, so if Frydenberg’s prime ministerial ambitions burn so brightly, it would make more sense to try and spend four years proving his leadership credentials as premier of Victoria before pivoting back to Canberra ahead of the 2028 federal election.
Alas, Frydenberg simply isn’t that good. Aligning himself so closely with toxic Scott Morrison was a major mistake. He even bunkered down with the PM at the Lodge in recent months, which is probably the closest he’ll ever get to the nation’s top job.
“he was also hit by the perception that he bagged Victorians during the world’s longest COVID lockdowns”
Perception?? Kicking people who were down, and in their time of need is a more apt description – IMO. Seems a few Kooyong voters have a bit more than a perception.
Perhaps if he moved to NSW he might have a better chance.
I came here to say this! It wasn’t perception, rather reality!
Indeed. “It only looked that way because it was that way!”
Beat me to it.
Please not NSW we have more than enough of the LNP. We have sold all the money making assets to the Donors, and you Think NSW economy requires, more debt, for services that are no longer available! The Federal debt due to no idea Joshy
yeah sure, he’d make it big in the NSW LNP!
Forget it Bill, we have our our dead wood and slackers. 😉
This is unfortunately true. NSW politics has been full of incompetents, non-performers and grubs. Josh would fit in well but where? He is literally a sitting duck. His Treasury forecasts for real wage increases were false and he ran record deficits, spent $5 billion on a failed submarine project for no result and budgeted for commuter car parks in his electorate where there were no train stations. Gives himself a tax handout in the Stage 3 tax cuts. Well he won’t be getting that anymore. I doubt given his links to the Liberal Party and Business that he’ll be out of a job for long and he will land one somewhere.
Bingo. Not perception, fact!
Does anyone beside Josh really thinks he’s leadership material? He’s old-fashioned and uninspiring, since he still believes in Thatcherism and has not put forward any exciting ideas during his term in parliament. A would-be leader does not publicly tell off a former premier of South Australia for installing a battery to save his state, nor does he use demeaning language to refer to his political opponents. And a competent treasurer does not make the huge mistake of gifting successful businesses 20 billion job keeper money. I think being in the private sector suits him better – I don’t understand why this last crop of libs wanted to be in government anyway since they delegated most if not all government work to the private sector
The score in South Australia was: Jay Wetherill 6 Josh 1 where the one was for being there. Wetherill ate him alive while he stood there with a stupid grin on his dial.
Also his grinning embarrassment when Commissioner Hayne refused to shake his hand when handing over the banking royal commission report.
https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2019/feb/01/awkward-commissioner-hayne-declines-to-shake-josh-frydenbergs-hand-video
The passing comment about making Andrew Wilkie Speaker warrants consideration. Now, of course, it might be construed as a bribe if Labor makes the offer (first referral to the Integrity Commission?), but if the man wants to enhance his already decent reputation, being the person who cleaned up the Reps cesspit (no dorothy dixers, answers to be relevant etc) would do him no harm.
Andrew Wilkie would make an excellent Speaker but it would preclude him from the active politics he so perfectly embodied, a passion to reform gambling laws and the mass abuses of security & surveillance legislative overreach.
As a long time soldier and erstwhile ONAnist he knows the spook world well enough to despise and rightly fear its overweening power & unaccountability.
In addition to the qualities already mentioned, let me add that his record shows a man of principle. He resigned from ONA in protest at Howard’s manipulation and lies re the Iraq War – that takes courage.
If I were him, I’d be tempted to assent to the job if it is offered, but with a request/stipulation that an ICAC investigate and review the AFP investigation into who in Downer’s office leaked the Top Secret classified ONA paper on Iraq, written by Wilkie, to Andrew Bolt on 20-23 June 2003.
Someone in that office committed a crime and has never been exposed for it, let along face the law. The AFP’s investigation was akin to what you would expect of an investigation into Xi Jinping by Chinese authorities.
Wilkie is a man of great integrity and would make an excellent speaker. Same for Helen Haynes.
Every offer of the Speaker’s chair is a bribe to look favourably on the government. It’s just that it is usually to a member of the same party. If that is worthy of referral to the Integrity Commission expect an avalanche of absolute tripe.
Many of the old parties have empty suits pretending to be MPs, esp. time servers in the Senate, but it’s hard to recall one who became Treasurer with so little to recommend him to colleagues except self entitlement.
Banker
Worse: Management Consultant.
Rather than the second letter in the alphabet, it should begin with the 23rd.
I was trying to think of a delicate way to say that.
A Thatcherite who praises Reagan, (the genius who took the US from the world’s biggest creditor to the world’s biggest debtor in just two terms in office) -a federal treasurer who managed to give away $40 billion to corporations whose profits
meant they did not qualify for JobKeeper -you would not trust Frydenberg, the Kooyong Dolt, with treasurer of the local tennis club. Then there’s Frydenberg, Morrison’s fawning enabler – as Joe Aston points out “He became chief enabler, the one laughing at Scotty’s dismal gags, even bunking at the Lodge last winter in a performative bromance of microwave dinners and episodes of Yes, Prime Minister.”
So to clarify:
plan A is for the Dutch-neo-Calvinist-dominated Tasmanian Liberal Party to have a senator resign, to seat a ‘cosmopolitan’ scion of the Melbourne establishment, which would then be ratified by a joint sitting involving a 13-12 lower house, and an independents-dominated upper house. After 3 or 6 years JF jumps back into a Reps seat – back in Victoria? In Tasmania? Or maybe Leichhardt?
Plan B is for someone in the dwindling number of safe Victorian Liberal state seats to stand aside, so a former Treasurer in a hated government can try and win an 18-seat 12% swing against both a dominant Labor party, and a wave of community independents at the state level, the deal consented to by a party now run by Mormons and evangelicals?
Plan C is to ask Monique Ryan politely if the Liberal Party can please have its seat back, in exchange for not contesting other community independent seats, which Ryan would agree to because ??????
Plan D is for Josh to steal the Koh-i-noor diamond by evading the laser alarm triggers and….
I am enjoying this SM
Yes, so am I.