Strewth: Kenneth Hayne tough reception for Josh Frydenberg

As Kenneth Hayne sat next to him, one of the questions that floated to mind was: What had Josh Frydenberg done to deserve this?

Kenneth Hayne, left, and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. You’re never fully dressed down without a smile. Picture: Kym Smith

Done by Ken

As Kenneth Hayne sat next to him like a remnant of the last ice age, unhappiness sublimating off him like a mist that was almost visible, one of the questions that floated to mind was: What had Josh Frydenberg done to deserve this? It was just meant to be a photo opportunity — the royal commissioner who’d been driving an autopsy into the soul of the financial sector, handing over his findings to the Treasurer, the senior and most relevant member of the government. Admittedly that same government’s leader voted against the royal commission so often that if you put boots on each vote you’d have enough to form two football teams with a decent subs bench, but that is surely water under the bridge. Yet there they sat, Frydenberg with his boyish smile, Hayne decidedly without, report piled between them like a printed horror show with a satin finish. It was our esteemed colleague, photographer Kym Smith, who was the catalyst for what followed. “Can we get a handshake?” she cajoled gently. The “nope” that floated up from Hayne was barely audible yet lethal, like an assassin who’d decided to not completely screw the silencer on to his pistol on the grounds the message he sent would be a touch more emphatic.

Oh dear.

Please cover my eyes now, I’m having flashbacks.

A ding-dong spectrum

At least getting done by Ken represented a cool change for Frydenberg. Certainly compared with his 2017 ding-dong with South Australia’s then premier Jay Weatherill, which was part melee in the marketplace of ideas, part conflagration. Few press conferences get immortalised on souvenir coffee mugs, but this one did. And it’s Frydenberg who is the magic ingredient. Even when it all goes arse-up, there’s still a sunny joy to be had. There isn’t the air of shared, coagulating misery that, say, Kevin Rudd brought to that press conference with Kristina Keneally, or Rudd’s even worse one with Julia Gillard when they sat in each other’s vicinity in front of the cameras, examining a map like it was the family cat they’d just backed the car over. None of that for Frydenberg. Even after he’d been run down by the Hayne Train, he got up like Wile E. Coyote and stoically dusted himself off, a little the worse for wear but good to fight another day, and awaiting the next delivery from ACME.

Ace of spuds

Following last week’s drama starring Louise Adler, a letter writer to The Sunday Age has seen some silver lining. Ian Powell of Glen Waverley wrote, “Hooray! Every chance now Melbourne University Publishing will publish my groundbreaking research on the Mongolian Mouse Moth.” This would be a return to the well; the pre-Adlerised MUP’s biggest-selling title was 1998’s A Field Guide to Insects and Diseases of Australian Potato Crops.

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