Wannabe-PM Josh Frydenberg has two other things he must kick off in 2021

A permanent increase in JobSeeker is important, but there’s more to do for wannabe-PM Josh Frydenberg in 2021.

Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has two other things he must kick off 2021 with in addition to delivering the permanent increase in JobSeeker. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

Wannabe-PM Josh Frydenberg has two other things he must kick off in 2021, in addition to delivering the permanent increase in JobSeeker.

First and most importantly he must sort out the leadership of the country’s primary corporate regulator ASIC and sort it out fast. Simply put, he must endorse the current but ‘absent’ chairman James Shipton or sack him, and do so now.

Yes, ASIC arguably desperately needs a far more comprehensive and fundamental structural shake-up. It’s hardly covered itself with glory over the past few - many? – years, especially in the wake of the Banking Royal Commission; and it ‘crowned’, so to speak, this dismal performance by allowing the ‘big end of town’ to rip billions of dollars off small shareholders through discounted share issues to favoured insiders through 2020.

But it would be ludicrous to leave it without a leader until all that was delivered – if indeed it ever will be. It’s got to be Shipton or someone else. Now.

Second but arguably far more importantly in displaying the qualities necessary – or at least, desired - in a prime minister, Frydenberg must lead in delivering both justice to and transparency about Christine Holgate who was effectively sacked as CEO of Australia Post by the current PM Scott Morrison.

It is now abundantly clear we are not going to get any of the ’leadership’, justice or simple transparency in relation to Holgate from either the PM or Paul Fletcher, the communications minister most directly responsible for AusPost. Indeed, in the case of Fletcher, he’s also more directly responsible for the arguably even more disgraceful behaviour directed at Holgate by the chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo and the entire board of AusPost.

It is now nearly three months since Holgate was forced to resign as CEO of AusPost over the most famous – or infamous – Cartier watches in Australian corporate history, or indeed Australian history generally.

It is nearly two months since the government got the independent report into the matter which cleared her of doing anything wrong or even inappropriate. After initially promising to release the report, the government has – not surprisingly, but utterly unacceptably – locked it away.

So there’s been no transparency or simple justice and AusPost has been without a CEO through – in the chairman’s own words - its most challenging period in its history, and is still without a CEO.

It’s been more than three months since Shipton stood aside as ASIC chairman in the wake of the controversy over the payment of his expenses in coming to Australia and ASIC.

It is now more than a month since the government, again, got the independent report into the matter and we’ve heard not a peep.

As treasurer, Frydenberg has direct responsibility for ASIC. He has no direct responsibility for AusPost – it comes under the shared control of Fletcher and the finance minister, which was Mathias Cormann when the matter exploded and is now Simon Birmingham.

By the bye, after allowing Holgate to be effectively sacked as CEO over the matter of $20,000 of watches, Cormann has been on an extended frolic of his own in an – almost certainly hopeless – attempt to win a lush tax-free job as head of the Paris-based OECD and which is costing Australian taxpayers many multiples of the $20,000.

While not directly responsible, though, I would argue that Frydenberg as the second most important person in the government and now utterly unquestionably the PM-in-waiting, has both the obligation and the opportunity to take a leadership role in relation to Holgate.

A final point: the AusPost board must also have a copy of the Holgate report. It has a separate obligation to its real owners – you – to make it public.

Originally published as Wannabe-PM Josh Frydenberg has two other things he must kick off in 2021