Josh Frydenberg casts himself as Kooyong underdog in campaign launch

Josh Frydenberg stood in front of nearly 1000 supporters by the banks of the Yarra River on Sunday and sold himself as the underdog in the fight for Kooyong.

Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg at his campaign launch for at Leonda in Hawthorn, Melbourne. Picture: NCA NewsWire /Brendan Beckett

Josh Frydenberg stood in front of nearly 1000 supporters by the banks of the Yarra River on Sunday and sold himself as the underdog in the fight for Kooyong.

A few years ago the concept of a tight-as-hell contest in the heartland of Australian Liberal politics would have been considered most unlikely.

Yet there he was, bolstered by messages from John Howard and supported by local constituents ranging from a dry cleaner to a battler in community housing, selling hard the message that he’s not only a good local member but a Minister in charge of a prosperous economy.

“Now is not the time to roll the dice on a weak Labor leader, on so-called independents who will not reveal how they will vote in a hung parliament,’’ he said at the Leonda function centre.

Leonda is where the Liberal Party sometimes gathers; it might even have been where Climate 200’s Simon Holmes a Court once broke bread with the Treasurer, raising cash for the Kooyong 200 club.

Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg poses for a selfie at his campaign launch in Melbourne. Picture: NCA NewsWire /Brendan Beckett

Yet in the past four years the world has moved on, largely hurdled a pandemic but left behind a state of generalised anxiety that has unsettled the globe.

The well-publicised and increasingly poisonous battle between Holmes a Court and Frydenberg hung over Leonda on Sunday as the member for Kooyong used his campaign launch to up the ante in his rhetoric against teal independent Monique Ryan.

Ryan, a paediatric neurologist, is getting an A-grade lesson in grassroots Liberal politics, although it could be argued her unlikely team of disrupters might be dishing out some tutorials as well.

Ryan is being backed by a young bloke called Robert Baillieu, whose father Ted is a former Liberal premier.

There are more than a few people who know Ted Baillieu who feel sorry for him, as his son has argued stridently in public for an end to Frydenberg’s reign.

“It’s all right Ted. I know families don’t always see eye-to-eye,” Frydenberg told the function as the giant-framed former politician stood mid-crowd.

Ted Baillieu has been here before, of course. In 2006, his mother-in-law voted for Steve Bracks.

Joan Jubb, who lived in the marginal Labor-held seat of Bentleigh, put up posters of Bracks in her front yard. Which is rather ironic, given that Ryan’s mother-in-law has apparently decided she will run with Frydenberg over the independent.

“It was their camp that brought Ted Baillieu’s son into the debate and as you know Ted Baillieu is a very respected former premier,’’ Frydenberg protested after the campaign launch.

“What I referred to was a factual discussion that I had with one of my local members. A lady came up to me and she said: ‘Josh, I’ll be voting for you’.

“She was very normal, very sensible and then she volunteered that she was Monique Ryan’s mother-in-law.”

And why was she voting for Frydenberg?

“ ‘Because you know what you are doing and you’re a nice person’,” Frydenberg reported.

The inside word is that the fight has become a two horse race, with the Green and Labor vote collapsing, leaving Frydenberg clinging to his primary vote in the most uncertain of times for a man with ambitions to run the country.