It says something about Josh Frydenberg’s skills that he has emerged from the Liberal Party leadership convulsions not only unscathed, but a mere heartbeat from the prime ministership.

Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Josh Frydenberg was awestruck as he gazed around the great and hallowed hall of University College, Oxford. It was 1996, and he was a young Australian student on a Commonwealth scholarship. On the ancient walls beneath dreaming spires hung portraits of famed alumni from the arts, letters, science and politics. Among them were former British prime ministers Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson and US president Bill Clinton. But there was no image of former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke, famed among other things for having gained a world record by guzzling a yard glass of beer in 11 seconds while studying at University College on a Rhodes Scholarship. Frydenberg, aged 25, felt such an oversight ought to be put to rights. Once he’d completed his Master of International Relations degree at Oxford (he’d already earned honours degrees in law and economics at Monash University), the young man returned to Australia and took a position as an articled clerk at the legal firm of Malleson Stephen Jaques in Melbourne. There, he came across the former attorney-general in the Hawke government, Michael Duffy. Frydenberg the clerk plucked up his courage, approached the formidable Duffy and asked how he might contact Hawke. He had a proposition, he explained: he wanted to have Hawke rendered in oils for his old college in Oxford, and wished to know whether Hawke himself would be amenable to the idea.


And so the call went through, and thus was arranged, by the most unlikely of means, a portrait of Bob Hawke by the noted South Australian artist, Robert Hannaford. Robert Hannaford's portrait of Bob Hawke hangs in University College, Oxford. As preparations went back and forth, Hawke rang the Frydenberg home one day and the call was answered by a family friend, actor Henri Szeps, best known for his role in the ABC TV series Mother and Son. “Bob Hawke here,” came the voice down the phone. “If you’re Bob Hawke, I’m Marlene Dietrich,” shot back Szeps, who was not aware of developments. Finally, after several sittings, the portrait was completed. And then came the bill: $20,000. Frydenberg had no idea how this might be paid, or by whom.


Fate intervened. Hawke and his old mate, Sydney advertising larrikin John Singleton, shared ownership in the champion racehorse Belle Du Jour. In April 2000, their mare won what was then Australia’s second richest race, the $2.5 million Golden Slipper. They had also backed the mare to win $1 million, leading to amazing scenes of revelry, including Singleton shouting beers for the whole Rosehill racecourse crowd. Striking while the celebrations were still hot, Frydenberg rang Hawke the next day with news of the $20,000 price tag, and suggested a few of the mates who had made big money at the races might chip in for the portrait. “Leave it to me,” said Hawke. Josh Frydenberg with family at Oxford University. And shortly after, former Labor prime minister Hawke flew to England to witness his portrait hung in the hall of his old university college, thanks to a young fellow who would, in time, become deputy leader of the Liberal Party and Australian Treasurer. The story says much about Frydenberg’s lifelong ability to build connections, including across political divides, and to take advantage of any circumstance that might arise.


The unanswered question, of course, is whether Joshua Anthony Frydenberg’s own portrait will one day hang in prime ministers’ corner at University College, Oxford. It won’t be for lack of trying. To get himself noticed in Parliament, he hand-wrote three opinion pieces every week for years, delivering them to the media at midday to ensure the best chance of publication. He held afternoon tea sessions in his backbench office with journalists, making sure they knew him, his views and his phone number. Now he has made it to one of the most powerful positions in the land, he has devoted much of the wall space of his office to portraits of his political heroes: Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, former governor-general Sir Zelman Cowen and, of course, Robert Menzies. A keen photographer himself, Frydenberg has a splendid collection of photographs of Menzies, the long-time Liberal prime minister who held the electorate of Kooyong - now Frydenberg’s own seat - for 32 years. One of the best has Menzies watching a football game while seated in his big black chauffeur-driven Bentley on a special ramp built for him at Princes Park, the home of the Carlton Football Club. Frydenberg is a Carlton man himself, though his sporting interests are broad: he once devoted a year to playing tennis until conceding he didn’t have the talent to strike it rich on the big-time professional circuit. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg with wife Amie and daughter Gemma after his swearing-in at Government House. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Frydenberg’s rise and rise in the profession he chose, politics, is a narrative of determined ambition and relentless work. When Fairfax Media interviewed him this week, it was the morning after the late-night Press Gallery Midwinter Ball, but he had been in his office since 5.45am.


When he finally won Liberal Party preselection for that plum seat of Kooyong in 2009, it was on the back of glowing references from two Liberal leaders who had spent much of their political careers as fierce rivals: John Howard and Andrew Peacock. When Frydenberg, now 47, was elected deputy leader and appointed Treasurer after the Liberal Party’s most recent leadership upheaval, his first phone call was to Howard. “It took me only four years to become Treasurer,” Howard chuckled. “You’ve taken eight years. What took you so long?” Frydenberg’s next appointment was coffee with former treasurer Peter Costello, who spent years in Parliament wanting Howard’s job as prime minister. In a state that has produced no Liberal prime ministers since Malcolm Fraser, Costello was Victoria’s first-ranking Liberal ... and now Frydenberg has taken the title. Yet famously, after those eight years as a federal Liberal parliamentarian, Frydenberg counts a Labor MP from Western Sydney, Ed Husic, as one of his close friends. Husic is Muslim. Frydenberg is Jewish. One of the exemplary moments in recent parliamentary history was the image last month of Frydenberg and Husic embracing after Husic had delivered an impassioned speech against bigotry in response to the call by former One Nation MP Fraser Anning for a plebiscite to reach a “final solution to the immigration problem”.

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