When new deputy Liberal leader Josh Frydenberg met SA’s Jay Weatherill
BEFORE Josh Frydenberg became 2IC to our latest PM, he was best known in SA as the man who came to town to spruik power policies — only to leave after being thoroughly Weatherilled on live TV.
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BEFORE Josh Frydenberg became deputy Liberal leader, he was a little known quantity in South Australia.
Except for that time he ran into former Premier Jay Weatherill at what surely must have been one of the most awkward political press conferences to occur before this week’s dramatic lowering of our nation’s already dramatically low political bar.
Until the federal Liberal Party threw its toys out of its cot this week, Mr Frydenberg was known to most South Australians as the man who had to keep a poker face as former premier Jay Weatherill sensationally crashed his party on March 16 last year.
Energy Minister Frydenberg, embroiled for months in an internal Liberal Party war over energy policy, was at the time engaged in an external war with SA’s former Labor government over precisely the same issue that has now claimed the scalps of another prime minister.
Mr Frydenberg’s visit to Adelaide was supposed to be something of a triumph for a federal government that had been at odds with South Australia ever since a storm knocked over some powerlines.
Along with a troupe of suits from energy giant AGL, Mr Frydenberg came to spruik the company’s virtual solar plants at about the same time Mr Turnbull had announced $2 billion worth of upgrades to the Snowy Hydro scheme.
Instead, he met a softly spoken Jay Weatherill carrying a big stick.
“I’ve got to say it is a little galling to be standing here next to a man who has been standing up for his Prime Minister (Malcolm Turnbul), bagging South Australia at every step of the way over the last six months,” Mr Weatherill suddenly railed before a stunned press gallery.
“To be standing here on this occasion, him suggesting we want to work together, is a disgrace.
“The way that your government has treated this state ... it’s the most anti-South Australian Commonwealth government in living memory.”
Mr Frydenberg, in response, lauded now former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s energy policy prowess.
“I feel that the premier trying to come into this to crash-tackle us at this announcement where he hasn’t put any money into this important initiative, which the Commonwealth and AGL have, just shows you, unfortunately, how desperate he is,” Mr Frydenberg said.
“The prime minister should be commended for his leadership, for his investment in such a nation-building project. I actually think it reflects very poorly on the premier that he has to engage in this type of petty politics.”
Today, that prime minister became the fourth to get the boot before the end of his term and that premier is putting his feet up.
Mr Frydenberg, as the second-highest ranking Liberal in the country, still has a long overdue energy policy to push through.
