The two-party system collapsing in May like a bridge made of sodden Weet-Bix meant a remarkable number of high-profile MPs on both sides of the aisle lost their jobs. Today Crikey checks in on the election’s casualties.
Josh Frydenberg
The former treasurer, unsurprisingly, didn’t have to wait long — it feels like we waited longer for his deeply reluctant concession call to Monique Ryan in Kooyong than to see him find his next job. He joined investment bank Goldman Sachs in July as a senior regional adviser for the Asia Pacific.
Terri Butler
Butler held Kevin Rudd’s old seat of Griffith before she was ousted by Green Max Chandler-Mather. After her concession — followed by a letter so salty and sour you could coat the rim of a margarita glass with it — the former Labor opposition spokeswoman on environment and water has had a flurry of appointments.
She joined the board of the Smart Energy Council, the board of Griffith University’s Climate Ready Initiative and was appointed chair of circular economy advocacy group Circular Australia.
Tim Wilson
Following his loss in Goldstein to Zoe Daniel, Wilson did the only appropriate thing for someone who occupies his place in public life combining trendy finance and debatable climate change action. He’s doing a PhD at RMIT University’s Blockchain Innovation Hub, studying “alternative models for carbon markets through tokenisation and the development of derivatives markets”. Well, indeed.
Kristina Keneally
Probably the major blight on Labor’s return to government this year was the parachuting of Kristina Keneally into Fowler, a multicultural seat where she didn’t live, which allowed independent Dai Le to snatch the formerly safe seat.
The former federal senator and NSW premier was announced in November as the new chief executive officer of the Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation.
Ken Wyatt
Since he was turfed out by voters in Hasluck (which turned out to not even be the most shocking result the Liberals suffered in the west) Wyatt was invited by the Albanese government to be part of a referendum working group on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
Just this week, he added to that resumé by being appointed chair of the international advisory board of the University of Western Australia’s public policy institute, replacing another political figure, former Labor minister Stephen Smith.
Ben Morton
The biggest shock the WA Liberals suffered on their catastrophic election night was the loss of Tagney, a seat so apparently safe that not even the most optimistic Labor figures Crikey spoke to thought it was in play. The departing MP, close Scott Morrison ally Ben Morton, was announced as a commissioner of the Insurance Commission of WA board by WA Premier Mark McGowan in October, just to show there were no hard feelings.
Jason Falinski
Falinski has been doing a bit of writing in collaboration with Wilson in The Australian Financial Review. His AFR bio also tells us he’s a “lecturer in behavioural economics”, though not where he does it, and his LinkedIn tells us he’s the chair of property managers Airtrip, which, as The Australian noted at the time, is the kind of company that could exacerbate the housing affordability issues Falinski was tasked with looking into while in government.
Meanwhile, Dave Sharma, Julian Simmonds and Trent Zimmerman have been less public on their new gigs. Sharma has listed himself as a “stay-at-home dad” since May on his LinkedIn and has had several articles published in conservative publications (as well as on his substack). Simmonds is general manager for beef and cattle company (and LNP donor) Stanbroke, and Zimmerman hasn’t updated his LinkedIn since leaving Parliament, but has been doing a spot of writing for Guardian Australia.
Celia Hammond must have thought she was in for a longer parliamentary career when she took over Curtin, Western Australia’s safest liberal seat, from Julie Bishop. As it turns out she got a single term before independent Kate Chaney snatched it away. Hammond, who was vice chancellor of Fremantle’s Catholic University of Notre Dame for more than a decade before entering politics, is the only MP expelled from the house in May whose post-politics activities are a total mystery to us.
Do you know what she’s up to these days? Let us know.
Only Scotty remains. Cutting a forlorn and lonely figure on the back benches, he by most accounts customarily rocks up late, spreads his obvious bulk over his appointed seat, removes his phone and spends his time playing with it, no one speaking to him, until he decides he’s had enough whereby he buggers off early.
He’s always been work shy, even the portfolios who secretly swore himself into had someone else doing the work.
Edit: “he” secretly swore
At least he is doing a whole lot less damage than he did as PM when every day brought more grief to one or another group, sometimes several groups on one day, of Australians.
I don’t think he has any better offers. He’s out of the game now, but happy to collect his bench warming fees. Perhaps he’s working on his memoirs in company time.
How about a remake of The Jerk? Scotty could play himself
No script writer required, just use Hansard!
Happy to collect his bench warming fee. Just like Peter Costello. Lazy till the end.
Not early enough.
And the only person who will sit in any proximity is his egregious gofer, Alex Hawke – long may they suffer.
Dock the bastards wages if he’s not on the job properly
Same pigs, different troughs.
Tim Wilson’s post-politics pastime couldn’t be more appropriate. He was ever the charlatan, so some blockchain financial derivative scam sounds right up his alley.
And it suggests no one threw any juicy bones his way. Or any bones for that matter. Pathetic and weird to the end.
Happy to see them all become productive members of society again (even Tim), except Kristina of course, she’s waiting for the next parachute to come wafting by.
Not so sure. the last one didn’t work too well. Partly her fault, but mainly the Labor Machine.
What a miserable, graceless, nasty thing that Terri Butler is. I saaw her deliver a speech at CPSU House in Thomas St, Sydney once some years ago and was taken aback by her lack of charisma and anodyne performance and general standing for nothingness. She shared a panel with another Labor nobody, who represented a north Melbourne seat trying to defend Bob Hawke’s claim and its context when he stupidly, not boldly, stupidly, stated in 1987 that by 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty. All the time engineering a recession. Makes you sick these people