In the dying days of James Shipton’s tenure as Australia’s top corporate law-enforcement officer in 2021, he met Josh Frydenberg on a Saturday morning to spitball candidates to replace him.

The then-treasurer had asked Shipton, whom he had known since they were Monash University law students in the ’90s, to come to his electorate office in Hawthorn East, in a building he shared with Miele, the kitchen appliances maker.