Josh Frydenberg | |
|---|---|
 Frydenberg in 2019 | |
| Treasurer of Australia | |
| In office 24 August 2018 – 23 May 2022 Serving with Scott Morrison (2021–2022) | |
| Prime Minister | Scott Morrison |
| Preceded by | Scott Morrison |
| Succeeded by | Jim Chalmers |
| Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party | |
| In office 24 August 2018 (2018-08-24) – 30 May 2022 | |
| Leader | Scott Morrison |
| Preceded by | Julie Bishop |
| Succeeded by | Sussan Ley |
| Minister for the Environment and Energy | |
| In office 19 July 2016 (2016-07-19) – 24 August 2018 (2018-08-24) | |
| Prime Minister | Malcolm Turnbull |
| Preceded by | Greg Hunt |
| Succeeded by | Melissa Price (Environment) Angus Taylor (Energy) |
| Minister for Resources and Energy | |
| In office 21 September 2015 – 19 July 2016 | |
| Prime Minister | Malcolm Turnbull |
| Preceded by | Gary Gray |
| Succeeded by | Matt Canavan |
| Assistant Treasurer of Australia | |
| In office 23 December 2014 – 21 September 2015 | |
| Prime Minister | Tony Abbott Malcolm Turnbull |
| Preceded by | Arthur Sinodinos |
| Succeeded by | Kelly O'Dwyer |
| Member of theAustralian Parliament forKooyong | |
| In office 21 August 2010 – 21 May 2022 (2022-05-21) | |
| Preceded by | Petro Georgiou |
| Succeeded by | Monique Ryan |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Joshua Anthony Frydenberg (1971-07-17)17 July 1971 (age 54) |
| Party | Liberal |
| Spouse | Amie Saunders |
| Children | 2 |
| Alma mater | |
| Profession |
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Joshua Anthony Frydenberg (/ˈfraɪdənˌbɜːrɡ/; born 17 July 1971) is an Australian former politician who served as thetreasurer of Australia and deputy leader of theLiberal Party from 2018 to 2022. He also served as amember of parliament (MP) for thedivision of Kooyong from 2010 to 2022.
After leaving university, Frydenberg served as an adviser to Prime MinisterJohn Howard and Foreign MinisterAlexander Downer during theHoward government. He also worked forDeutsche Bank until his election to theAustralian House of Representatives at the2010 federal election. Quickly appointed to the frontbench, he went on to serve in several ministerial roles during theAbbott andTurnbull governments from 2013 to 2018, including asMinister for Resources andMinister for the Environment and Energy. In August 2018, he was elected as deputy leader of the Liberal Party following aleadership spill, which sawScott Morrison elected as leader and prime minister. Morrison subsequently appointed Frydenberg as treasurer.
At the2022 federal election, Frydenberg suffered a significant swing against him, and lost his seat toTeal independents candidateMonique Ryan.[1][2] Frydenberg became the first sitting treasurer to lose his seat sinceTed Theodore at the1931 election.[3] After leaving politics, he became chairman at the Australian arm of investment bankGoldman Sachs.
Frydenberg was born inMelbourne. His mother, Erika Strausz, is a psychologist andUniversity of Melbourne professor and his father Harry is a general surgeon. His mother was aJewish Hungarian born in 1943 who arrived in Australia in 1950 as a stateless child from a refugee camp after escapingthe Holocaust.[4] His great aunt, Mary Frydenberg, is also a victim of the Holocaust; she spent 2 years at the infamousAuschwitz concentration camp. His father is also Jewish; his grandparents emigrated to Australia from Poland in the 1930s.[5] His grandfather owned ahaberdashery store, along with two other Jewish families, with locations inColac,Camperdown, andMortlake.[6]
Frydenberg was educated at Jewish schoolsBialik College andMount Scopus Memorial College.[6] Throughout his childhood, Frydenberg was a keentennis player. He lobbied his parents, unsuccessfully, todrop out of high school to pursue a career in tennis. When they refused, Frydenberg stuck up a handwritten sign on his bedroom, reading, "The pain of discipline is far easier than the pain of regret".[6] After finishing high school, he took agap year to play tennis full-time in Australia and Europe. Frydenberg played againstMark Philippoussis andPat Rafter, and represented Australia at twoWorld University Games. He and his father were present at the 1997Maccabiah bridge collapse.[6][7] A photograph of Frydenberg carrying a man on a stretcher was used in Israeli newspapers.[6]
Frydenberg completedhonours degrees in economics and law atMonash University, where he became president of the Law Students Society,[6] before working atMallesons Stephen Jaques, a large Australian commercial law firm. Frydenberg won both aFulbright Scholarship to attendYale University and a Commonwealth Scholarship to attend theUniversity of Oxford. He opted to accept the latter, completing a Master of International Relations atUniversity College, Oxford, with a thesis on Indonesian politics.[7] While deciding between Oxford and Yale, he was introduced to and developed a friendship withGreg Hunt, a Fulbright Scholar and future cabinet colleague, who introduced him to the Liberal Party. Frydenberg wasbest man at Hunt's wedding, and Hunt was agroomsman at Frydenberg's wedding.[6] When attending Oxford, mutual friendSteven Skala introduced Frydenberg to SirZelman Cowen, a former Australian governor-general and Oxfordprovost atOriel College. Cowen "became a mentor to Frydenberg and they spent many Sundays together discussing literature, music, philosophy and law".[7]
Frydenberg also earned aMaster of Public Administration from theJohn F. Kennedy School of Government atHarvard University.[8]
Frydenberg was one of seven Liberal MPs in the46th Parliament of Australia who obtained degrees at anOxbridge orIvy League university, the others beingAlan Tudge,Angus Taylor,Andrew Laming,Dave Sharma,Greg Hunt andPaul Fletcher.[9]
In 1999, Frydenberg worked as an assistant adviser toAttorney-GeneralDaryl Williams before becoming an adviser to Foreign Affairs MinisterAlexander Downer, a post he held until 2003. From 2003 to 2005 he was a policy adviser to Prime MinisterJohn Howard, specialising in domestic security issues, border protection, justice and industrial relations. In 2005 he took up a position as a Director of Global Banking withDeutsche Bank in the company's Melbourne office.[10]
In 2006, Frydenberg announced that he was seeking Liberal preselection forKooyong, a safe Liberal seat in Melbourne's eastern suburbs. He was contesting it against the incumbent member,Petro Georgiou, who had held the seat since 1994.
In the days leading to the preselection convention, Queensland frontbenchersIan Macfarlane,Peter Dutton andSanto Santoro backed Frydenberg's credentials, for which they were criticised by formerVictorian PremierJeff Kennett.[11]
Georgiou won the nomination by gaining 62 of the 85 delegates' votes, with Frydenberg receiving 22 votes and a third candidate, Alastair Armstrong, receiving one vote. After Frydenberg's defeat, federal Treasurer and deputy Liberal leaderPeter Costello, who represented the neighbouring seat ofHiggins, encouraged Frydenberg to run for pre-selection inChisholm, a marginal electorate neighbouring Kooyong, held byAnna Burke of theALP. Frydenberg declined the offer, saying, "This is where I am from, this is where I feel most comfortable and this is where I think there is real work to be done."[12]
After Georgiou announced his decision to retire at the2010 election, Frydenberg ran for preselection for Kooyong again. Frydenberg's candidacy was supported by references from former prime ministerJohn Howard and former Opposition LeaderAndrew Peacock.[13] With the support of former Liberal state presidentMichael Kroger, Frydenberg won Liberal preselection.[14] He defeated industrial lawyerJohn Pesutto, who later went on to become the leader of theVictorian Liberal Party.[15]
In the 2010 election, Frydenberg won the seat with 52.56% of the primary vote and 57.55% of thetwo-party-preferred vote.[16] He was only the fifth person to represent this traditionally safe non-Labor seat in 88 years. He held the seat that was once held by Australia's longest-serving prime minister,Robert Menzies.
The first Jewish Liberal elected to the House of Representatives,[17] in his maiden speech, Frydenberg recounted the story of his Jewish grandparents' and great aunt's migration to Australia from Nazi controlled Europe and lauded the contribution of migrants to communities within his electorate. He enunciated his belief insmall government, called for stronger ties with Asia while also maintaining a solid alliance with the US and proposed a target of having two Australian universities within the world's top ten by 2030.[18]
Frydenberg is a member of the centre-right faction of the Liberal Party.[19]
Frydenberg has at times been the target of antisemitic attacks, such as defacing his election material with Nazi icons.[20]
At the2013 federal election, Frydenberg was re-elected with the largest swing to the Liberal Party in the seat since 1975. He was sworn in as a Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister on 18 September 2013, with particular responsibility for the government's deregulation agenda. On 23 December 2014, Frydenberg was sworn in asAssistant Treasurer in a ministerial reshuffle and replacedArthur Sinodinos, who resigned due to delays in anICAC inquiry.[21][22]
Following theSeptember 2015 Liberal leadership ballot whereMalcolm Turnbull became thePrime Minister, Frydenberg was appointed theMinister for Resources, Energy andNorthern Australia in theFirst Turnbull Ministry. In February 2016, the Nationals Matt Canavan took over responsibility for Northern Australia in therearranged ministry.
In 2015, he declared that he had switched positions regardingsame-sex marriage and publicly supported same sex marriage.[23]
With the re-election of theTurnbull government in2016, Frydenberg became theMinister for the Environment and Energy in theSecond Turnbull Ministry.[24]
In the years following the2016 election, numerous members of parliament were deemed to be ineligible to sit in parliament due to them breachingSection 44 of the Constitution of Australia, which prohibits MPs from having dual citizenship.[25]
In the course of the2017-18 Australian parliamentary eligibility crisis, suggestions were raised that Frydenberg might be in breach of Section 44, as his mother and her family had come to Australia as refugees fromHungary and were stateless at the time, but subsequently Hungary conferred citizenship by descent, which may have applied to Frydenberg.[26] Documents from theNational Archives show that Frydenberg's grandparents and mother were considered "Hungarian" when they arrived in Australia, but had applied for a certificate of exemption, listing their nationality as "stateless".[27]
Labor Party MPs were split on whether the matter should be investigated:Mark Dreyfus indicated that he would pursue the matter, but other Labor MPs requested that he desist.Ed Husic said that he felt uncomfortable with his party questioning the legal citizenship of stateless Jewish refugees escaping Europe.Mark Butler stated that it was not the party's official position to pursue the matter.[28]
Following the2019 election, Frydenberg was taken to court over the issue by a constituent, Michael Staindl.[29] In March 2020, theFederal Court ruled that Frydenberg was eligible to sit in parliament.[30] Frydenberg was awarded legal costs of $410,000 against Staindl, of which Staindl paid him $350,000. In July 2022, the Federal Court approved a settlement in which Staindl would make no further statement disparaging Frydenberg or his lawyers and no further payment would be required.[31]
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Two leadership spills were carried out by the Liberal Party in August 2018, with the second resulting in TreasurerScott Morrison replacing Malcolm Turnbull as party leader and prime minister.Julie Bishop did not seek re-election as deputy leader, and in the resulting ballot Frydenberg won a majority in the first round with 46 votes, while Trade MinisterSteven Ciobo received 20 and Health MinisterGreg Hunt received 16.[32] During Morrison's subsequent press conference, he announced that Frydenberg would replace him as treasurer.[33]
At the2019 federal election, he retained his seat of Kooyong with a reduced majority, following a challenge from high-profileGreens candidateJulian Burnside.[34] Perceiving Burnside as a strong contender, the Liberal Party doubled its spending on the campaign in Kooyong, from $500,000 to $1 million.[35] Frydenberg received a primary swing of -8.2% against him, as well as the lowest Liberal vote in Kooyong in 97 years.[36]
In July 2019 a Kooyong resident petitioned theHigh Court, asCourt of Disputed Returns, for a ruling that Frydenberg had been ineligible owing to foreign citizenship, being allegedly a citizen of Hungary.[37] On 23 November 2019 it was reported that Frydenberg had received confirmation from the Hungarian government that no record could be found of Hungarian citizenship of himself or his mother.[38] On 12 December 2019, since factual as well as legal questions remained unresolved,Justice Gordon of the High Court (who was critical of parties' delay) referred the case to theFederal Court.[39] On 17 March 2020, a Full Court of the Federal Court found on the basis of expert evidence that Frydenberg's maternal family had lost their Hungarian citizenship upon leaving Hungary, so that he was not and had never been a Hungarian citizen, and consequently he was not ineligible to be elected to the federal parliament.[40]
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In the lead-up to the2022 election, Frydenberg's marginal seat of Kooyong faced a significant challenge by independent candidateMonique Ryan, who was a part of the "teal independent" movement.[41] At the election on 21 May, Frydenberg lost his seat to Ryan, and he conceded defeat two days later.[42][43] Frydenberg's loss would mark the first time that the seat of Kooyong would not be held by the Liberal Party or its predecessors since its inception in 1901.
Frydenberg reportedly had a close working relationship with Morrison and "often stayed overnight atKirribilli".[44] He and Morrison both stated Frydenberg also stayed with Morrison atThe Lodge instead of elsewhere in his own private accommodation while in Canberra during Parliament.
Frydenberg delivered his first federal budget in April 2019.[45]
In July 2022, Frydenberg joined investment bankGoldman Sachs as a senior regional advisor for the Asia Pacific.[46] In September 2023, Frydenberg was appointed as the chairman of Goldman Sachs’ Australian and New Zealand operations, a move which led Frydenberg to rule himself out of re-contesting Kooyong in 2025.[47][48][49]
After theAustralian Electoral Commission announced a draft redistribution for the division of Kooyong, it was widely speculated in the media that Frydenberg would attempt to become the candidate, with several members of the federal Liberal party announcing their support for his candidacy. As the Liberal party had already preselected Amelia Hamer as the candidate for Kooyong, preselection would have to begin again for Frydenberg to become the candidate. Frydenberg issued a statement in response stating he did not intend to stand at the next election.[50]
In May 2024, Frydenberg examined the rise of antisemitism in aSky News Australia documentaryNever Again: The Fight Against Antisemitism.[51]
Frydenberg is married and has two children.[52]
Frydenberg is a supporter of theCarlton Football Club,[53] and served as the club'snumber-one ticket holder for 2021 and 2022.[54] In 2019, he was theMelbourne Storm number-one ticket holder.[55]
Frydenberg's sister, Lexi Frydenberg, is a pediatrician in Melbourne[56]
| Parliament of Australia | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament for Kooyong 2010–2022 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Assistant Treasurer of Australia 2014–2015 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister for Resources 2015–2016 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister for the Environment and Energy 2016–2018 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Treasurer of Australia 2018–2022 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party 2018–2022 | Succeeded by |
Prime Minister:Tony Abbott | ||
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Prime Minister:Malcolm Turnbull | ||
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Prime Minister:Malcolm Turnbull | ||
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Prime Minister:Scott Morrison | ||
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Prime Minister:Scott Morrison | ||
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