The Liberal Party created the perfect female candidate in ... Josh Frydenberg?

If the Liberal Party were to create in a laboratory a perfect female candidate to avert the decline in its female vote, they could not Frankenstein-up a better example than Amelia Hamer.

The 31-year-old is an Oxford-educated former financier who happens to be a Liberal blue-blood – in fact, her great-uncle was a former Liberal premier. With a knighthood.

What’s more, Amelia Hamer was pre-selected for the seat of Kooyong fair and square, after former treasurer Josh Frydenberg lost the seat for the Liberals at the 2022 election. She worked her way there, via the carefully signposted route women are supposed to follow when they want to enter politics without the patronising imposition of quotas or targets: the meritocracy.

Amelia Hamer, not Josh Frydenberg. Credit: The Age

If one were a feminist or a cynic (or better still, both at once), one might drily ask: “What could possibly go wrong?” To which the answer comes: the Liberal Party, that’s what.

Out of apparently nowhere, on Sunday, it was reported that there were “calls” for Frydenberg – a heavyweight whose ambitions, when in parliament, ran all the way to the top – to return to Kooyong to contest the next election.

Frydenberg lost his seat in the great teal wave of 2022, ousted by the Climate 200-backed independent candidate Monique Ryan, a paediatric neurologist. The teals attracted voters who disliked former prime minister Scott Morrison, who didn’t believe the Liberals could deliver a credible climate policy, and who were fed up with the lack of women on the Coalition benches, let alone on its leadership team.

Frydenberg, a former close ally of Morrison who had presided over an aborted climate policy (the National Energy Guarantee) and who was, obviously and through no fault of his own, a man, was rejected by Kooyong voters. But he has never ruled out returning to politics and, at 52, still has plenty of time.

The Frydenberg comeback chatter began on ABC’s Insiders on Sunday, and was advanced when former home affairs minister Karen Andrews came out publicly on Sunday saying there was an “opportunity” for the Liberal Party to “reassess” its preselections for key Victorian seats, including Kooyong, following a draft revision of electoral boundaries by the Australian Electoral Commission. The redrawing of boundaries would mean the seat of Higgins, which Labor wrested from the Liberals at the 2022 election, would be abolished. Another woman, former Higgins MP Katie Allen, had been preselected for that one.

For anyone normal, a redrawing of electoral boundaries by the AEC is not very interesting or noteworthy. But for political hopefuls and faction hacks, it is a thrilling game of musical chairs in which all bets are off, and there is a delightful opportunity for shoulder-barging. No better time to inch one’s metaphorical buttocks onto a metaphorical seat.

The speculation was allowed to run for half a day before Frydenberg, a seasoned political operator, ruled it out. “Re the recent speculation about Kooyong: I am not rushing back to politics, my position on contesting the next election remains unchanged,” he posted to X.

It should be noted here that Frydenberg did not actually state a position, he only noted that his previous position (we are left to recall what that was) is unchanged. This keeps his options open. “I will continue to support the Liberal Party and our local candidate, Amelia Hamer,” he continued.

Credit: SMH

Hamer would be forgiven for feeling less than supported. Any paranoia on her part would not have been allayed by heroically patronising comments from former Liberal MP Jason Falinski (also booted by a teal at the last election, from the affluent NSW seat of Mackellar).

Asked on Sky News if Frydenberg should return to Kooyong, and if so, what about Hamer, Falinski said: “I think Amelia is a team player, and she would understand that we want to put our best people on the field.” And anyway, he continued, “there are other seats, especially in state parliament, that need to be filled”.

State parliament in a Labor state? Ouch.

Liberal strategist Kristy McSweeney told The Australian: “It’s not a winning strategy for the party to be perceived to bully an impressive female candidate out of a job that she has been preselected for and is doing a good job at.”

Charlotte Mortlock, the founder of Hilma’s Network, a recruitment vehicle for Liberal women, posted: “Josh could have challenged Scott Morrison for the leadership, he didn’t. Josh could have put his hand up for Kooyong, he didn’t. He could have run for the Victorian Senate vacancy, he didn’t. Women are not collateral damage for Josh Frydenberg’s regrets.”

Victorian Liberal senator Jane Hume backed Hamer, pointing out that she was a “highly qualified woman” who had already been pre-selected for the seat. And also, she noted, the redrafting of electorate boundaries was not necessarily a reason to reopen a preselection. “Draft boundaries change all the time, they have done in the past. It would be a crazy thing to do,” Hume told Sky News.

Could it be that a boundary redistribution was a pretext to Fryden-float this balloon of an idea of a return to politics for the former treasurer? And could it be that it was revealed, in the floating, that Frydenberg doesn’t enjoy enough support to overcome the fallout from knocking off a young, diligent female candidate who has played fairly and won?

Male or female, only a cynic would think so.

Jacqueline Maley is a senior writer and a regular columnist.

Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.