Last week, Josh Frydenberg was having a giggle in his Canberra office with Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Seven days later, the Environment and Energy Minister must feel like he's been on the end of one of the Hollywood martial artist's roundhouse kicks.

On Wednesday, Mr Frydenberg was in spectacular retreat over carbon pricing, having explicitly put an electricity industry emissions trading scheme on the discussion table on Monday, before disowning the idea entirely by midweek.

At the same time, Fairfax Media has learned, his personal newsletter was dropping into letterboxes in his Melbourne electorate of Kooyong featuring another recently thorny issue for the minister.