Donald Trump had the art of the deal. Australia’s treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has the art of the rise.
People who master the art of the rise understand that the personal is political. Biography is destiny. Frydenberg’s log cabin story enlivens episode one of the new Josh Frydenberg Podcast with Sarah Grynberg – a new audio series billed as a monthly deep dive “beyond the media scrums and soundbites”.
Grynberg (who has another podcast “where guests share their extensive knowledge and expertise on the ways to cultivate greatness”) opens her first conversation with Australia’s treasurer by wondering “who is Josh Frydenberg, behind the suit and away from cabinet doors”.
Regular consumers of the many television and radio shows the treasurer regularly appears on could probably supply some initial theories without much prompting. For some politicians, launching a podcast would be a means of working around pesky questions from annoying journalists. But in Frydenberg’s case, the new project augments his already hectic media schedule.
Listeners of the Frydenberg (with Grynberg) podcast are promised a monthly discussion about the treasurer’s journey into politics, his role as a father and husband “and his reflections on some of the most challenging moments in his career to date”.
In episode one, released on Thursday, we begin with young Josh, the would-be tennis pro, who almost did, but didn’t, because “my ambitions were far greater than my talents”.
The child of loving parents (psychologist and surgeon), who swotted through his final year of school with a self-improvement maxim pinned on his bedroom door “the pain of discipline is far easier than the pain of regret” (Grynberg murmured her appreciation) before heading for Monash University, law firms, banks and political staffing. And then onto being preselected for the Liberal party and landing in parliament, becoming treasurer, becoming deputy Liberal leader (is the pattern becoming clear?), mulling whether or not to become foreign affairs minister, his first choice, but resolving to become treasurer on John Howard’s advice. “No regrets,” Frydenberg shares, magnanimous about settling for a job that generally springboards an able mid-career politician into the prime ministership so long as he has the numbers at the right time.
By this point in the dialogue, the tempo of the recount is as relentless as the protagonist.
The only thing that saves the conversation from being absolutely excruciating is Frydenberg’s affability and brimming enthusiasm – both genuine character traits rather than means to ends, or masks donned in aspirational company.
But fortunately when we hit the 2019 election, an undiplomatic confession emerges.
It is the night before the poll. Frydenberg persists with a ritual of having his closest friends around for a meal. “So I have my friends around for dinner and we say to each other, OK, let’s make the predictions about tomorrow,” the treasurer says.
Frydenberg predicts he will win Kooyong (“I had a pretty tough contest there”). But he predicts Scott Morrison will lose the election.
Softening the blow. “By a handful of seats.”
It is unclear in Frydenberg’s telling whether this thought crime was conveyed clearly to Morrison ahead of the “miracle” victory. “That next day, Scott was working late travelling around the country,” the treasurer says. “We spoke a number of times during the course of the day.
“Would it be a hung parliament? Maybe we’d just get there. To his credit, [Morrison] had the faith we would get there and that miracle would happen, and it turned out that way.”
Indeed it did.
But here’s the thing about relentless risers.
They always dare to dream that the miracle victories will one day be theirs.
