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Frydenberg’s Folly

By Ad astra  

What’s happened to Josh Frydenberg? As many have commented, Frydenberg’s vicious attack on Victoria’s Premier, Dan Andrews, came as a surprise. It’s intensity was extraordinary. Why?

Only he would know. We can but surmise. What did you conclude?

Here’s my assessment:

First, here are his acerbic words:

”Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg labelled the premier’s handling of the (COVID-19) crisis as ‘the biggest public policy failure by a state government in living memory’”.

Josh Frydenberg is ambitious. He hopes one day to become PM. He knew that his very public attack on Andrews would propel him into the public limelight and portray him as a strong future leader. Was Morrison watching? Did he feel the need to protect his back? Or was he so sure of himself that he thought he could allow Frydenberg to go out as an attack dog to do his dirty work?

And Dan Andrews was the ideal target – a Labor figure who has been attacked from all sides of the conservative spectrum. Andrews’ daily press reports on the status of COVID-19 in Victoria have been helpful and informative. He stays put at the rostrum until every question has been addressed. You can imagine how irritating his opponents find him! Some express their distaste of him in florid terms in the social media: “I can’t stand the sight of him”. Frydenberg knew that attacking Andrews would draw enthusiastic support from his conservative colleagues.

Frydenberg is politically smart. He knew that any attack he mounted would need to be dressed up in economic garb to give it authenticity. This was easy for him – being Treasurer, he has an abundance of economic bullets in his armoury. But his bullets we not aimed simply at wounding Andrews’ economic credentials; they were intended to wound him personally. The venom of Frydenberg’s words is testimony to that. If you’re sceptical about this assessment of his intentions, read his words again.

So why is this piece titled Frydenberg’s folly?.

Because in one fell swoop he has morphed his image as a credible commentator on the nation’s accounts into just another partisan attack dog. He has replaced his reputation in the area of finance with what we have come to despise so profoundly.

That is his folly!

This article was originally published on The Political Sword

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36 comments

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  1. Jaquix

    I dontthink Frydenberg is smart at all. I think he’s a dope, no talent of any kind. Shadow Treasurers Jim Chalmers got it right IMO. . “1st class Networker, 3rd class Treasurer. “

  2. andy56

    The LNP are all wanna be managers who have risen to their own level of incompetance. Non of them are capable of managing the top job because it requires another skill set, Planning and bring people with you. They have been drinking from the same ideological pool- let it rip capitalism. No doubt , they have all learnt to keep their mouths shut because you know, on tax matter. In the middle of the virus, we need to be discussing a plan, not just accepting a plan from the gas industry.

    My bet is we get tax cuts and $100b spend , over the next ten years. A lousy $10b a year. Lots of jobs from this one, not. Government planing is whole of year operation, not just left up to budget night, thats pure selfishness and glory seeking. I recon they will bring down a ripper that will be a millstone for years to come.

  3. Kerri

    I would have to disagree that this is where Frydenberg has shot himself in the foot? He has had his aim on both feet for some time now.
    Just look at that awkward photo with Kenneth Hayne who refused to shake hands or smile. Morrison would not have sat in on that photo shoot.
    His hysterical screeching commentary on Dan Andrews shows his inability to read the room and his dedication to those in his own sphere.
    It also shows the political smarts of Morrison letting Frydenberg take one for the team against a very popular Premier.
    Frydenberg is ambitious. Hell? Can you name a Lib who doesn’t have their eyes on the prize? A Doug Cameron equivalent maybe??
    I think this is more performance art learned from the orange political failure and aimed at a similar, shall we say “caste” of voter audience.
    Frydenberg is a twerp. His defence of his potential citizenship by pulling out the race card spoke volumes.
    Is it Kaye Lee who refers to him as “the work experience boy”?
    And then there were those “the correct way to vote” signs that Joshie was so innocent of……
    Morrison knows that keeping the accident prone treasurer in place protects him from the karma of having done to him as he does to others.
    But that’s just my opinion.

  4. Phil Pryor

    Very few of the Frydenberg type have experience, talent, skill, but, they all seem to have the fire of greed, ego, vanity, inflated scrotuim like swelling of the Huge Self. We, the voting citizen class do not deserve this, for the difference between a huge bag of shit aand the treasurer is merely the bag. But, the others, from the Big Turd, the P M, a Piltdown Man, a Poxed Mentality, a Preposterous Misfit, are just as worse. Imagine a B Joyce teaching your children??? Nightmare. Joyce the instant vomit.., just add excesses of free beer.

  5. Florence Howarth

    His folly is taking on a job he has no hope of being capable of doing.

  6. leefe

    Fraudenburg exposed himself as a fool when he gushed over Maggie Thatcher and Reaganomics. His rabid pekinese assault on Andrews simply shows that he learnt nothing from the earlier misstep.
    The arrogance of these LNP swine is gobsmacking.

  7. Peter F

    The then Premier of South Australia Jay Wetherall summed him up perfectly when Frydenberg tried to take credit for renewable successes initiated by Wetherall. The Video of the press conference was perfect. Can anyone supply a link?

  8. Jack Cade

    Contrary to the theme of the article, I have not detected any economic skill or knowledge in ANYTHING Frydenberg has said. As Peter F pointed out, Jay Weatherill made an absolutely fool of him over the Coalition’s attitude to the ‘ big battery.’ And as for leadership qualities, EVERY LP member must look at Abbott, Morrison and Peter ‘Snakehead’ Dutton and think – ‘Shit, if they can do it, so can I.’

  9. New England Cocky

    I agree with the sentiments expressed above. You must be joshing if you believe that Friedeggburger is foreman material; why he cannot even count to 40 properly. Compared to Scummo, I dunno, they are each desperately inferior to the finance brains in Labor.

  10. Kerri

    Here you go Peter F!
    Note how there has been zero criticism of the SA renewables since the state changed over to Steven Marshall.
    Frydenberg is a shallow, hollow man.

  11. Kerri

    Oops! Sorry Peter F my bad!🤪

  12. Jack Francis

    Frydenberg looked manic. He either took too much medication or not enough.

  13. Jack Cade

    Kerri

    That ranks with Gillard’s pulling Abbott’s trousers down in front of the whole world and showing that all he had was budgies.
    Jay W. was a great loss to SA, thanks to the new ICAC head, Ms. Vanstone ( have you head that name somewhere before?) gifting Marshall 4 marginal seats in the re-distribution.
    SA people will not be holding their collective breath in anticipation of her charging half the bloody state government with electoral expenses fraud in her new position.

  14. ajogrady

    Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg are pathetically trying to score political points in a futile attempt to avert attention from the disgraceful and cruel reality that for many is the lived experience in the privatised aged care sector. Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg are the men with Ruby Princess horse has bolted plan that is the to little to late plan. Daniel Andrews has a plan that is working. Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg have no plan except that they believe that success is the ability to go from one total failure to another total failure with no loss of enthusiasm or any sign of a conscience or any shame. Their failures will be Australias failures. Pointing the finger at Daniel Andrews is nothing more then a exercise in desperation and poor judgement that are the actions of a vulgar and reprehensible failed leader and his incompetent and lazy side kick. .
    Being contemptuous, contentious, contempable, arrogant and dismissive is not leadership. Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenbrg are a reflection of their parties absolute corosive and corrupt poor governance standards that is regularly evident when ever one of the other failures in their party is found to be wanting in their respective portfolios. Corrupt and calamitous sums up the failed Morrison/ Frydenberg experience.

  15. Paul Gale

    “Reputation”?….That’s not the reputation I would have graced him with.

  16. Kathryn

    Fraudenberg is about as shallow as a carpark puddle and hasn’t got sufficient intellectual spark to light a 5 watt globe for a nanosecond! The man is an indescribably dull, insignificant, unimaginative, pretentious and callously inhumane political parasite who, unlike the high achieving, intelligent and popular Daniel Andrews, hasn’t managed to achieve one thing that provides any benefit to a single working- or middle-class Australian.

    The vindictive jealousy this non-descript sociopath has for Andrews (and other foresightful members of the ALP and/or Greens) is SO blatant and so toxic, it eats away at these repugnant, non-achieving, self-promoting grubs in the LNP like a cancer! Fraudenberg is just ANOTHER penny-pinching, mean-spirited, FAILED treasurer at the end of a long, long line of hopeless, short-sighted LNP Treasurers (like the wasteful Costello, the idiot Sloppy Joe Hockey and the manipulative snake oil salesman, MorriScam) who have ALL managed to do NOTHING except DOUBLE our national debt and deficit disaster going back to 2015 LONG before Covid-19 was even heard of!

    Do us a favour, Fraudenberg! Crawl back under your rock and let the BIG BOYS (Daniel Andrews) make the RIGHT decisions to keep Australians safe. All the medical experts have clearly stated that SELF-ISOLATION is the ONLY way to combat a highly contagious pandemic like Covid-19. If you opened your shuttered eyes (Fraudenberg), you will LEARN that countries that have not isolated – America, India and Brazil – have hit the top three spots as the worst performing nations in relation to Covid-19. To date, America has more than 6.45 MILLION people suffering from Covid-19 and more than 190,000 people DEAD from the disease. For God’s sake, WAKE UP and stop putting transient PROFIT in the pockets of the Top 1% ahead of measures to safeguard the health of ordinary people!

    Clearly, Fraudenberg and the rest of the useless, lying, conniving, self-serving parasites in the worst government in our history, fell out of the STUPID TREE and hit every bloody branch on the way down!

  17. Barry Thompson.

    The reality is, chubby chops has no idea about fiscal matters.
    He denigrates people such as Jim Chalmers and Daniel Andrews because he knows he is not in their league and never will be.
    We have had some poor Treasurer’s over the years and he is up there with the poorest. Bombast does not hide incompetency.

  18. Kaye Lee

    Frydenberg is a fool. His only response to economic questions or suggestions from Jim Chalmers is puerile ridicule because he can’t cut it in actual monetary debate. He relies on the slogans and if pushed to go deeper he comes up with crap like this:

    “I was thinking yesterday, as the member for Rankin, [came] into the chamber fresh from his Ashram deep in the mountains of the Himalayas … barefoot into the chamber, robes flowing, incense burning, beads in one hand, wellbeing budget in the other, I thought to myself: ‘[what] yoga position the member for Rankin would assume … to deliver the first wellbeing budget?’”

    Or last week’s effort where he called Chalmers “Jumble Jim”.

    These guys wouldn’t make it into the audience at a real debate about ideas. It’s humiliating.

  19. wam

    Andrews x 2
    Fryer, has a handicap and his attack on our andrews may be a long term ambition strategy to show religious diversity to his andrews???

  20. Lawrence Winder

    Fiction’s Frydbum is a fool….he has no economic crediblity, and following Scummo of Marketing’s bully-boy tactics will rebound and not serve him well.

  21. corvusboreus

    Kaye Lee,
    Annoying thing being, had Chalmers responded to the cultural/religious ridicule with a belittling reference to Freydenberg’s own identified faith, he would have immediately been branded an ‘anti-Semite’.
    Some cows are more sacred than others.

  22. Henry Rodrigues

    The first recession in 30 years and that is what this gap toothed idiot is trying to distract our attention from. Of course being mentored by that failed arsewipe treasurer Costello, doesn’t do much good, and having a feckless former treasurer as your party’s leader is also no help. But Murdoch and his minions are always there to assist and so fat head fried burger goes on the attack to prove he is still worthy of attention.

  23. corvusboreus

    His litany of budgetary errors shows that Freydenberg is incapable of doing basic economic sums.
    If he can’t do simple maths, then he hasn’t a snowflake’s chance on Sol of understanding or acknowledging the significance and value of economic ‘externalities’, such as societal well-being or environmental health.

  24. Kronomex

    He’s a cockroach with delusions of grandeur and with his karma he’s sure to be reincarnated as a cockroach again.

  25. corvusboreus

    Kronomex,
    The rule of numbers dictates that, given reincarnation as reality, the majority of us will come back as scuttling cockroaches, obedient ants, or lot-fed livestock waiting to be slaughtered.
    Fun fact: humans and their domesticates now account for over 96% of all mammalian biomass.

  26. Michael Taylor

    John Howard was the Treasurer when I first started taking a more than passing interest in politics, and he was totally incompetent; setting the standard for all LNP Treasurers since. Frydenberg is just the latest in line of a string of economic pygmies.

    Costello sort of knew what he was doing, but Hockey, Morrison and Frydenberg would serve us better as boundary riders along the dingo fence.

    PS: I still haven’t forgiven Howard when as Treasurer he increased the brandy excise. A bottle of St Agnes brandy went from $6 to $10 overnight. 😡

  27. Ken Fabian

    Blameshifting and Scapegoating have been like the LNP’s own special superpower; no surprise to me that it is what they are turning to. The relentless criticism of opponents – coordinated across the Right Conservative commentariat – got them victory and the “unwinnable election” so of course that will be their MO for all upcoming elections, federal or state. It would be heartening to see this political tactic fail, but I hesitate to make bets on that.

  28. New England Cocky

    I live in awe of the beautiful descriptive language many correspondents have used to accurately describe our worthless Federal Treasurer (and the NSW Treasurer is no better).

    @Kronomex: I take great offence (several kilometres in fact) at your referring to the Treasurer as a ”cockroach” because I support Queensland in the NRL State of Origin series and Joshy would not make the first training session for Queensland, where the teams are picked on talent.

  29. corvusboreus

    NEC,
    Funny thing happens in NSW & QLD on NRL State of Origin nights.
    Domestic assaults go up by over a third, whist street bashings go up buy more than half.(based on stats from 2018).
    Apparently encouraging people to divide by colour then get excitedly drunk and exchange dehumanising slurs causes a marked increase in levels of violence.
    Whodathunkit?

    Ps, I’m great fun at parties.

  30. Jon Chesterson

    Frydenberg’s malicious, factitious and fascist attack on Dan Andrews is far more than mere folly, it demonstrates his psychopathology, hypocrisy and willingness to assassinate his opponents, something he should be more careful about given his ethnic origins. He demonstrates his total disregard for reason, sensibility, diplomacy, respect, and it disqualifies him from hiding behind the mask of the holocaust, if he thinks for one minute he is entitled to be taken seriously or have immunity to public criticism on account of political correctness or taboo. He is nothing more than a sniper and malicious attack dog, which puts him in the same inhumane and politically racist category and malodorous character as the rotting corpse of Dutton – But let’s not mention the Nazis – Too fawlty to be true.

  31. New England Cocky

    Geez corvusboreus, who’d have thought that NSW supporters would take out their frustrations on their locals rather than the NSW selectors? Guess that is what happens when a group of self-serving white supremacist selectors choosing a team of knuckle dragging Neolithic zombies that are are regularly defeated by a team of naturally talented Aboriginal professional footballers.

  32. corvusboreus

    NEC,
    Interesting interpretation.
    My view on such?
    XXX or Tooheys, it’s all stale piss to me.

  33. Jack Cade

    For the first time since Speers took the helm (well, not exactly – I watched his first two programmes) I turned on The Insiders this morning, only to find that he would be interviewing Snakehead Dutton. Apart from finding him a repulsive person, both physically and philosophically, there is absolutely nothing the creature could say that I would find remotely interesting.
    Do I turned it off and took my dog for a walk.

  34. Jo

    I do find I agree with much of what has been written about Josh and add: the past bully boy tactics he escalates in public often have a defend-my-base tone. It may also be used to deflect from liberal branch stacking problems that have emerged in Victoria, or perhaps even from extreme frustration escaping caused by the business lobby in his home state, and how the neo-liberal agenda appears to be disappearing by a health agenda?

  35. Barry Thompson.

    You should have stayed tune Jack, it was a train wreck for Dutton who contradicted himself a number of times and appeared most uncomfortable.

  36. corvusboreus

    Based on current trends I predict that within six to twelve months the creature called Dutton will have acquired the power to call out the army against us.
    I hope I am wrong about about where things are headed, but my own heart and mind have combined with converse with cleverness to convince me that I’m not
    Time to step back into the gloom and play grey.

    I apologise for not taking things seriously enough to put my words to better use, and wish you all well through the days to come. .

    Corvus out.

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