Fresh from the mortifying news that he was sharing the second highest post in government with his leader, former treasurer Josh Frydenberg is being spoken of as a Liberal saviour. Apparently Peter Dutton has not inspired the nation in his role as opposition leader.
As outrage swirls around Scott Morrison for running a secret parallel ministry, there is are some wistful musings about the prospect of Josh getting back into parliament, even by replacing ScoMo. The former PM has become an unwelcome presence on his own side, and few would be sorry to see his back. Perhaps only Labor really wants him to hang around.
One of the more bizarre things Scott Morrison said in his hour-long, sometimes combative, Wednesday news conference was that he’d had a “wonderful” conversation with Josh Frydenberg on Tuesday.
Morrison contacted Frydenberg after the revelation the former prime minister had himself sworn into the treasury portfolio in May last year and never told the treasurer. On the same day he’d inserted himself in the home affairs ministry, unbeknown to occupant Karen Andrews.
When she learned this week of his action, Andrews exploded and called for Morrison to leave parliament. Frydenberg, now in the investment banking world although retaining a hankering for politics, acted with more restraint.
But for the ex-treasurer and ex-member for Kooyong, the affair must raise the “what if” question.
What if the story of Morrison’s extraordinary power-grab had come out a few months before the election?
Guide Dogs Victoria’s “capital fundraising” boss Paul Wheelton made over $87,000 in donations to the Liberal Party before the Federal Coalition gave millions of dollars of taxpayer funds to his charity.
35 dogs at what cost?Frydenberg has been tipped to be the new head of the AFL.
A Melbourne “charity” whose CEO almost certainly broke federal laws by officially spruiking a sitting member of parliament is charging taxpayers four times what it was a decade ago to deliver just three-quarters of the services.
LAST WEDNESDAY’S national accounts confirm what voters have apparently already decided — that the Morrison Government was not that great at economic management after all.
Apparently, Kooyong isn’t an important seat as far as Morrison is concerned. You won’t find him walking the streets there. It seems he would prefer Josh lost because history shows win or lose Morrison isn’t giving up his job without a fight.
He engineered his way into it and will need to be levered out. If numbers count Josh Frydenberg would easily have 66% hands up to see Morrison waved farewell by a Party who can’t stand him. So Morrison in order to stay would be only too pleased to see Josh gone. That’s why Howard and Costello have been walking the streets there, but not Morrison.
With just three days left before polling day, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese will deliver last-ditch election pitches in key eastern state seats, after a day in which policy costings dominated debate.
The first reason is that the figures the Treasurer has quoted are from different years. Australia is sourced to 2020, New Zealand and Canada to 2019 and the OECD to 2018.
This inconsistency is particularly problematic as emissions figures to 2020 include large reductions as a result of the pandemic, and not government policy, while prior years do not.
Figures for 2020 are available for New Zealand, Canada and 32 of 38 OECD countries.
Rules and Laws aren’t for Josh Frydenberg they stand in his way
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is responsible for laws being broken that maintain accountability in the fossil fuel industry. Anthony Klan reports. THE BOSS of the nation’s monopoly infrastructure regulator – who engaged in serious illegality that the Federal Government went to substantial lengths to cover up – earlier helped dismantle accountability laws in favour of major fossil fuels infrastructure owners.
Good morning, early birds. The Morrison government’s plan for climate action will lead to nearly 4 degrees of global heating according to analysis, and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and opponent Monique Ryan went head-to-head in a fiery debate yesterday. It’s the news you need to know, with Emma Elsworthy.
Labor’s Jim Chalmers has accused Treasurer Josh Frydenberg of lying as the pair clashed in a debate on Wednesday. “The Treasurer has just lied to you,” a fired-up Dr Chalmers said after Mr Frydenberg said Labor would “always tax more” than a Liberal government. “In every way that you measure tax in the budget, this government has taxed more than the last Labor government – that’s just a fact,” he said.
Frydenbergs most recent slogan “Keep Josh” makes him sound more like an Independent who no longer wants to be seen as part of the Losing Team. He should declare which side he’s on. It doesn’t sound as if he expects to win this election or see Scott kept.
So it’s pretty clear that the independents have certain candidates more worried about them than the Labor Party which is why I find their whole strategy about as clever as Barnaby Joyce running on a platform of: “I’m so into family values that I have two families.” The first difficulty any independent has is getting noticed. If I were to run in Kooyong, I’d be lucky to attract a handful of votes but if Josh were to say publicly that you shouldn’t vote for me,
I’d probably get more votes than if he ignored me. Similarly, Timmy Wilson’s dummy spit about Zoe Daniel’s signs means that I know who’s the “Voices Of” candidate for Goldstein even though I’m not in that electorate.
Let’s be real, it’s thanks to the Libs that Monique Ryan is being interviewed here, there and everywhere. It’s thanks to the Libs that a large number of the people in the endangered electorates know who the teal candidate is and what they stand for.
Frydenberg would have, if he could have, said “They’re doing it tougher in Ukraine therefore we should be grateful for Morrison’s LNP”
‘‘Australians couldn’t give a stuff about inflation in the United States,’’ Labor’s Jim Chalmers told a media conference. ‘’And the UK,’’ he added later. The shadow treasurer was responding to Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s attempts to play down the inflation rate (5.1%, the highest in 21 years) by citing higher rates elsewhere. Malcolm Fraser tried similar to Frydenberg in 1983 amid severe recession, running the slogan: ‘‘We’re not waiting for the world’’. It didn’t save the Coalition from a thumping defeat.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s Victorian seat of Kooyong could fall to an independent, a new poll shows.The UComms poll of 847 residents conducted on April 12 found independent candidate Monique Ryan held a 59 to 41 per cent two-party preferred lead over Mr Frydenberg in the inner-Melbourne electorate.The poll also showed a 44 per cent disapproval rating for Mr Frydenberg’s record as local MP and a 57.2 per cent disapproval rating of Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Scott Morrison is gone. Anthony Albanese will win the election. Josh Frydenberg is fighting to save some of the furniture. There, it’s been said. The commentariat generally is too scarred from getting the 2019 election wrong to call it, carefully hedging their collective bets. Something similar happened in 1996 after Paul Keating’s surprise 1993 “true believers” victory, but the polls and the national mood have had enough of the Morrison government in 2022 as they had had enough of the Keating government in 1996. The majority of the electorate perceives the Coalition as tired, cynical and short of talent after nine years in power – not fit for purpose.
FRYDENBERG: Thank you Prime Minister. You can see I’m holding up a jar filled with jelly beans. For only $5 per guess and you can guess as many times as you wish; if you guess correctly, you get the jar and all the jelly beans in it. This offer is open to all of Australia. I’ll pay the postage if required. Everything going well we expect to raise $38,000 for a Labor held electorates affected by the floods.
MORRISON: Thank you, Josh. What a good guy he is. What Josh humbly didn’t mention is he bought the jelly beans out of his own money. And remember, all monies raised will go to a Labor seat. Michaelia Cash, get yourself up here.
Scott Morrison has announced a $35 million flood-assistance fund that will be made immediately available to households in the eastern Melbourne suburbs of Hawthorn, Canterbury and Camberwell. The funds will be used to build protection against a potential disaster in Josh Frydenberg’s marginal seat of Kooyong.
When announcing the industry levy, ASIC said it was to ‘recover the regulatory costs of the ASIC through annual levies and fees-for-service’.
Last financial year, ASIC collected $314.5m via the industry levy — almost three-quarters of its $437m total operating cost.
The Federal Government’s record-breaking $1.078bn profit from ASIC came in the same year that ASIC’s two Federal Coalition-appointed executives were forced to resign in a major expenses scandal.
Both ASIC chair James Shipton – a former senior executive with notorious global investment bank Goldman Sachs – and Daniel Crennan QC, a Melbourne barrister, were illegally paid almost $200,000 more than they were entitled to.
Treasurer Frydenberg announced a “review” into the scandal, but, as previously revealed, he released a doctored version of the subsequent report, from which three-quarters of its key findings had been secretly deleted.
Despite the severity of the situation – a cover-up of corruption at the top of the corporate regulator involving the nation’s Treasurer – not one other media outlet has reported the scandal to date.
After a humiliating defeat in the Senate, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was described as ‘lighter than helium’ and having ‘no agenda’ by one staunchly pro-Coalition media outlet, as Alan Austin reports. ONE OF THE MOST sycophantic pro-Liberal Party newspapers, The Australian Financial Review (AFR), labelled Treasurer Josh Frydenberg ‘the dolt from Kooyong’ last Thursday, claiming his ‘humiliation is total’ and ‘his complete lack of political judgment has been exposed for all to see’.
Economic Management of the LNP = Frydenberg = shrinking immigration,= Shrinking Workforce,= Drop in Unemployment = Economic downturn not upturn
Josh Frydenberg’s embarrassing take-down by the Senate this week over a bizarre plot to over-regulate proxy advisers has left this government with no economic agenda, indeed a record of failure on the economy. Alan Austin investigates the claim of “massive” jobs growth and finds it, like many of this government’s claims, does not stack up.
Our Harvard-trained Treasurer has been caught out acting as someone’s puppet and jumped into a stoush blindfolded. He’s tried to install a regulation while nobody was looking and thought he’d get away with it. All hell has broken loose and you know it has when even Murdoch’s Terry McCrann among other major conservatives have yelled Frydenberg’s gone a Fascist mile too far. Josh is all style and less polished looks with little attention to what it means when doing it. He’s managed to make Kooyong Victoria’s Warringah.
The biggest question is why spend so much political capital on such a small issue when it has such bigger issues – the global pandemic, the aged care crisis and a failure to create a federal corruption watchdog – and so little time given the impending election.
Josh Frydenberg brags about the employment figures he’s achieved for Australia. What he calls employment however is for is for an increasing number of people barely survival.
When Garry Wallis clocks off from work as a carer he doesn’t drive home. He parks in a suburban car park in Wollongong in the NSW Illawarra region where he sets up for the night. “I am nearly 60 and I have prostate problems, so a toilet is really important for me,” he says. “The toilet near here gets locked at 7 o’clock at night and doesn’t open again until seven [in the morning] so you sort of have to hold it until then.” It’s the small things that get to him since he started sleeping rough, like not being able to do his washing or use a bathroom overnight. man in front of van Garry Wallis says the pay from his work as a carer isn’t enough to afford a home in Wollongong.(ABC Illawarra: Tim Fernandez) But the $500 a week he earns as a full-time carer isn’t enough to cover the rapidly rising cost of renting a home. “At the moment I’m homeless because I only get the carer’s allowance,” he says. “It is not enough to rent and eat at the same time.”
Yet, Mr Frydenberg seemed ecstatic to discover that his potential nemesis, Dr. Monique Ryan was once a Labor member. While it might be true that this might scare some of the more conservative voters off voting for her, I suspect that there are more likely to be people who would have voted Labor in the seat who may go, “Oh, she must be ok then. I’ll vote for her.” And like I said, unless there’s a North Shropshire situation where traditional Labo(u)r voters decide that it’s more important to sink the conservative candidate than vote for their actual party of choice. then most of the Independents in the various seats will have little chance of succeeding. But if any of them are actually still in the race after Labor and The Greens are eliminated, then they’ll probably get a strong preference flow from those two parties. But thanks, Josh, you may have actually sent enough votes Dr Ryan’s way to give her a realistic chance of toppling you. I suspect you’ll still limp over the line, but, if you don’t, well, at least you gave it a real shake and bake!
Josh Frydenberg’s nomination for chair of the competition watchdog may have to recuse herself from any decisions relating to one of the regulator’s biggest cases if she is approved for the job.
This was part and parcel of Morrison’s National Quarantine Plan which he financed to be placed with the cooperation of Dan Andrews. Now Josh Frydenberg seems to be saying Victoria is the uncooperative outlier. How incompetent are these clowns as leaders and negotiators.?
Morrison capitulates to the Queens demands and Frydenberg declares it’s proof of Australia’s goodwill in cooperating at COP26. If the media doesn’t criticize this bullshit we are expected to believe it’s true when it’s patently not what happened. Did Frydenberg bullshit his way through Harvard too?
Victoria’s purpose-built $200 million quarantine facility still has a role to play in the pandemic, experts say, however it won’t be as crucial as anticipated due to high case numbers and vaccination rates.The Mickleham “centre for national resilience” for incoming travellers won’t be ready until the end of the year, however there is a risk it may become a white elephant if Victoria relaxes quarantine rules.NSW’s move to effectively end quarantine for most travellers by opening international borders to those who are vaccinated from November 1 has raised questions over the purpose of the facility being built in Melbourne’s north.
Frydenberg proves a Harvard MBA isn’t always money well spent just spent. He was warned and warned by supposedly lesser educated men.
The Australian Tax Office also warned Frydenberg in July 2020 that big businesses and tax agents were “amending” prior sales records to potentially help them qualify for wage subsidies during the pandemic. It wasn’t until October that the eligibility criteria was tightened. The revelation is contained in a ministerial submission from the ATO’s deputy commissioner, James O’Halloran. It was produced under freedom of information and first reported in the Australian Financial Review.
Gucci and Prada owe Josh Frydenberg a debt of gratitude. Louis Vuitton is not alone. The Italian high fashion houses got JobKeeper too. Michael West and Callum Foote report as evidence emerges the Treasurer opted to ignore advice regarding a claw-back mechanism to get the money back from profitable companies.
Big business doesn’t vote, small business does. That’s the dilemma for Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg as they try to keep JobKeeper secret heading into the election. Michael West reports.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and his big business patrons are in crisis mode amid rising demands to end the JobKeeper cover-up and disclose the transfer of billions to from average Australians to large and profitable companies. Michael West on the unfolding political drama.
The man in charge of Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s office was running corporate affairs at Westpac’s BT when the superannuation giant was aggressively covering up a major scandal involving the gouging billions of dollars from its members.
Hope Unlimited church reported a profit of $43,355 in 2019, which increased dramatically to $1.6m in 2020 in part with government pandemic payments
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