Frydenberg may be too nice for top job, and that’s just tough

The Treasurer is the heir apparent but he’ll need a healthy reforming legacy when the time comes. And that will bring tensions with the leader.

The jury is still out on whether Josh Frydenberg has a ruthless streak. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Josh Frydenberg this year has emerged as the clear front runner to take over the Liberal leadership from Scott Morrison when the time comes. The Treasurer and Liberal deputy leader has been elevated during the COVID crisis with his handling of the economic challenges.

To be sure, Morrison is not going anywhere. The PM has the next election in the bag and his party room wants him to stay.

But Frydenberg is now the heir apparent.

Peter Dutton is no longer a serious alternative on the hard right of the party, if he ever was. Christian Porter is now an unlikely conservative option, and the only senior moderate is a senator, Simon Birmingham. Greg Hunt has done well in the health portfolio this year, but he’s not a leadership option. There really is no one else, certainly no women. This is the Liberal Party, after all.

The Treasurer needs to work on his Queensland colleagues a little more to convince them he’s the real deal, but he has time to do that. Meanwhile, he will continue to use his considerable energy to remind other colleagues around the country he has what it takes to lead.

Frydenberg and Morrison get along, but there are tensions. Treasurers are always frustrated by their prime ministers, to varying degrees.

John Howard found Malcolm Fraser permanently frustrating. Howard wanted to engage with the reforms the Campbell Review recommended but was never allowed to. In the end Bob Hawke and Paul Keating embarked on the necessary micro-economic reforms in the 1980s with large degrees of support from then-opposition leader Howard.

Keating as treasurer had his own issues with Hawke, starting with Hawke’s unwillingness to enact a consumption tax after the 1985 tax summit. Peter Costello found Howard too timid on some reforms, and certainly too profligate in his spending. Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd never got along.

The point is, tensions between treasurers and PMs is a necessary evil. Often policy and political disagreements can become personal rivalries. Frydenberg has not crossed over yet in that respect with Morrison, but he will.

Right now both are at pains to tell people how well they get along, but now that Frydenberg is the natural successor their relationship will change.

Morrison will become increasingly focused on maintaining his dominance. Frydenberg will start to see the government through the prism of how decisions made affect its longer-term standing. That is, come a time when he might be leader.

Frydenberg has performed well in 2020, but as Treasurer he’ll also be held accountable for the debt being built up and the deficits being clocked up. Throw in the challenges of getting unemployment down and ensuring strong growth does not cause higher inflation, and Frydenberg’s emergence as the heir apparent comes with risks.

Which is all the more reason why he will want to be able to point to a healthy reforming legacy when he is in line for the top job. That was Keating’s big selling point when he toppled Hawke, notwithstanding having been the treasurer who presided over a recession.

So far Frydenberg can point to some tax cuts and some business concessional adjustments in the last budget. Insolvency and foreign investment legislation passed in the final parliamentary sitting period is also valuable. Throw in digital transformation to keep media executives happy, and the Treasurer is not without achievements.

He will need to work hard to push his leader into having the courage to embark on anything further, however.

Morrison is no ideologue. Far from it. He’s a pragmatist through and through, and next year might be an election year.

Frydenberg has claimed Margaret Thatcher as one of his political heroes. We’ll soon see if he has any plans to emulate her reforming credentials. It will require staring down a PM.

There is little doubt Frydenberg is a hardworking minister. In every portfolio he has held he has been quick to engage with the communities his ministry affects. He is accessible and open to debate. And as far as education goes, he is one of the more qualified MPs in the parliament. Apart from his undergraduate degrees in law and economics here in Australia, Frydenberg holds masters degrees from two of the world’s best universities; Oxford and Harvard.

Morrison has an undergraduate geography degree.

Like Morrison, Frydenberg’s pre-parliamentary career is somewhat limited. I suspect the wide-ranging consultation the Treasurer engages in is partly to make up for that. Which shows awareness. It’s also an inevitable consequence of embarking on a political career from a relatively early age. Howard and Keating had limited pre-parliamentary careers, necessarily so given their respective ages when entering parliament.

Looking at Morrison’s prime ministership, there is much there for Frydenberg to learn from.

Some are positive lessons: Morrison’s political and campaigning skills for example. His folksy capacity to engage with the mainstream. But there are also lessons about how not to act: the stubbornness and some of the old fashion policy scripts, for example.

Climate change might be one of those. While I expect Morrison to come on board with the 2050 net zero emissions target (wait for the announcement), it is what else he does (or does not do) to help Australia get there that will have more meaningful consequences for the environment and Frydenberg’s career.

The Treasurer does not want to be left to pick up the pieces of a shattered legacy and lost credibility on the issue of climate change right at a time when he hopes to take over. Failure on that score could result in the obvious successor to Morrison consigned to the wrong side of the Treasury benches when (or soon after) it is his turn to lead.

I do have one serious bone to pick with Frydenberg if he wants to take the next step: for the love of God speak more quickly when doing media conferences, interviews and speeches. He did not used to speak so painstakingly slowly. I do not know which comms genius told him to slow down to the extent that he now does, but that person clearly does not have a clue. Listening to the otherwise articulate Frydenberg struggle to generate words in such forums is like pulling teeth.

The phrase “nice guys finished last” is a condensed use of comments made by Brooklyn Dodgers baseball manager Leo Durocher in 1946. Frydenberg is a nice guy, perhaps too nice to make it to the top.

I am not sure too many prime ministers are all that nice. Certainly Morrison has shown a willingness not to be: tough decisions on borders as immigration minister, downright callous policy changes surrounding Robodebt as social services minister and treasurer. As Prime Minister, Morrison’s demolition of Bill Shorten was viciously brutal, as was Keating’s take down of John Hewson and Howard’s take down of Mark Latham. The point is, prime ministers need a ruthless streak and that is perhaps the one element in Frydenberg’s character where the jury is still out.

In politics if you are aiming to become PM and do not make it, you might as well have finished last. Just ask anyone who has tried, come close but failed.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.