Victorian Liberal director Simon Frost to rejoin Josh Frydenberg

Victorian Liberal state director Simon Frost is returning to work with Josh Frydenberg. Picture: AAP

Josh Frydenberg has lured ascendant Victorian Liberal state director Simon Frost to his Treasurer’s office.

The band is getting back together!

Frost - whose econometrics skills are legendary in Treasury circles - will join Frydenberg’s office in September.

He will be a key adviser to the deputy Liberal leader, helping his boss navigate administrative mines and defuse factional bombs.

But first Frost has to finish one more key assignment at 104 Exhibition Street: overseeing the Victorian senate candidate race to replace Mitch Fifield, who is off to be Scott Morrison’s man in the UN.

Frost was recalled to the Liberal machine role in a Christmas emergency after then state leader Matthew Guy was smashed by Labor’s Dan Andrews at the November election.

That redeployment - at the urging of his then boss Frydenberg, Victoria’s dominant Liberal - worked out well.

The state was a key battleground at the federal election in May.

Despite widespread forecasts of massacre after the Turnbull coup, only two Liberal seats were lost, Chris Crewther in Dunkley and Sarah Henderson in Corangamite.

PM Morrison was even able to raise money in blue blood circles.

Most notable was the $500,000 top up from Charles Goode and the Cormack foundation, which as Margin Call revealed was committed during a fundraising dinner at billionaire Anthony Pratt’s mansion Raheen.

The former ABC journo Henderson - whose recent campaign was run by Frost’s predecessor as director Nick Demiris - is currently the favourite to succeed Fifield, although a wide field is expected for the ballot, which will be held at Caulfield racecourse on September 8.

Among the contenders is Karina Okotel, who didn’t spend all that time raising her profile by cosying up to, and then spectacularly parting ways with, former president Michael Kroger for nothing.

But does she have the numbers?

Also expected to join the race to replace Fifield is Andrew Robb’s former chief of staff Zoe McKenzie, who was unsuccessful in her recent effort to replace Kelly O’Dwyer in Higgins.

McKenzie is certainly well connected with the departing senator. Fifield appointed her last July to the NBN board, which is chaired by Ziggy Switkowski.

But here are three Liberals unlikely to run: Adam Kempton, Joshua Bonney and Marcus Bastiaan.

Victorian Liberal president Robert Clark today informed members that the trio are the subject of motions by the administrative committee that would charge them “guilty of conduct gravely detrimental to the best interests of the Party”.

Sounds ominous.

Josh Frydenberg has lured Simon Frost back to his office. Picture: AAP