Josh Frydenberg’s autobiography might be one of the longest job applications in history

A Grateful Son, the first book by Josh Frydenberg – former federal treasurer, former deputy leader of the Liberal Party, and former member for Kooyong – might be regarded as one of the longest job applications in history.

He makes it clear that he has an alternative vision to the current Liberal leadership for how to return the party to power. This is most explicit in the concluding chapter, titled “a better way”. But it is also evident from comments scattered throughout.

Review: A Grateful Son – Josh Frydenberg, with Gideon Haigh (HarperCollins)

There is, writes Frydenberg, “no goat track back to government through regional and outer suburban seats alone”. This is a blunt rejection of the strategy pursued unsuccessfully by former Liberal leader Peter Dutton and largely continued by the current leader Angus Taylor.

Frydenberg is unrepentant about the expansionary fiscal policy adopted during the COVID pandemic. By contrast, Taylor has recently apologised for “spending too much”.

Looking ahead

A Grateful Son stakes out Frydenberg’s positions on a wide range of issues.

He acknowledges an ageing population and increased defence spending will continue to put pressure on the budget. He wants government spending to be cut, but he is shy about saying exactly where.

He advocates streamlining government functions. For example, he suggests the federal government could take full responsibility for disability support, while the states could take full responsibility for childcare.

He sees an important role for tax reform and says “negative gearing should not be sacrosanct”. He wants a national debate about lifting the GST rate and broadening its coverage. Some of the revenue raised could be used to cut income tax.

Coincidentally, the Grattan Institute has just released a similar analysis arguing we should raise the GST. Taylor was quick to slap down the idea of a GST increase, saying “that we won’t do”.

Frydenberg claims to “understand the vulnerabilities of refugees: our family owe everything to Australian benevolence”. This is a more sympathetic attitude than is currently fashionable on the right of politics.

On climate, Frydenberg states bluntly that “climate change is real […] we need to reduce our emissions”. But he is walking away from the “net zero” commitment, which he has downgraded to an “ambition”.

He regards Australia becoming a republic as “both inevitable and desirable”.

A moderate manifesto

It all adds up to a more moderate manifesto than the current Liberal leadership is offering. It would give the the party a better chance of winning back metropolitan seats like Kooyong, though Frydenberg acknowledges that in other parts of the country the challenge comes from the right, in the form of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. He attributes One Nation’s rise in opinion polls to concerns about immigration, the cost of living and infighting within the coalition.

Frydenberg claims he and his family will not make up their minds until early 2027 whether he will seek Liberal preselection and try to wrest Kooyong back from teal Monique Ryan, who defeated him in the 2022 election.

But he does compare himself to John Howard and Robert Menzies (although not Malcolm Turnbull): Liberals who returned to the party leadership after losing it. It is not a perfect analogy. Unlike Frydenberg, who was never party leader, Howard and Menzies retained their seats in parliament. Frydenberg notes, however, that they “came back stronger”.

He also lays on with a trowel his love for the suburbs of Kooyong. He notes a few times that he has lived there most of this life. And he adds “politics, for me, has always started with where I live”.

Frydenberg calls the seat of Kooyong, previously held by Liberal leaders Menzies and Andrew Peacock, “where the Party came from”. A federation seat, it has never been held by the Labor Party in its 125-year existence.

Looking back

Frydenberg had a happy childhood with loving parents. For this reason, he is a “grateful son”.

If the book is read by anyone other than political tragics, they may find most interesting the account of his year as a professional tennis player, when he travelled the world before having the self-awareness to realise he lacked the necessary ability.

Frydenberg studied economics, law and public administration at the “concrete jungle” of Monash University, the “dreaming spires” of Oxford, and the “grand” and “warm” Harvard. He has worked as a lawyer and a banker.

But his career has largely been in politics. He worked for federal attorney-general Daryl Williams in 1999, then became an adviser to foreign minister Alexander Downer from 1999 to 2003. He was a senior adviser to then prime minister John Howard from 2003 to 2004. He entered federal parliament at the 2010 election, was assistant treasurer by 2014 and joined the cabinet in 2015.

Frydenberg won the deputy leadership in 2018. This entitled him to choose his portfolio. He sought advice from Howard, who told him being treasurer was the “most important job in government”. Presumably, he meant after prime minister.

Frydenberg chose to be treasurer, despite his earlier interests being more in foreign affairs. This meant he was treasurer during the COVID crisis, the biggest hit to the Australian economy since the Great Depression. He was pragmatic enough to abandon the Tony Abbott-era “debt and deficit disaster” rhetoric and follow treasury’s advice for massive fiscal stimulus and the JobKeeper program, reassured by Howard’s advice that “at a time of national crisis, there are no ideological constraints”.

Frydenberg acknowledges his good fortune in having Steven Kennedy as treasury secretary during the crisis. He rightly describes him as “calm, resourceful, worldly wise” and perfectly equipped by training, experience and character. Kennedy was even sufficiently prescient to have worked years before on a paper about the implications of a pandemic.

Frydenberg viewed with scepticism the so-called “national cabinet” during the crisis, which included the then prime minister Scott Morrison and the state premiers. He recalls that “cooperation tended to last as long as it took people to leave. After that, it was every premier for themselves.”

Frydenberg remained treasurer, and was seen as a future leader, until the Morrison government was defeated at the 2022 election. Despite a well-financed campaign, he lost his seat to teal independent Ryan. He claims Ryan’s team “waged a campaign thick with personal abuse”, a claim Ryan rejects.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Josh Frydenberg plans to keep speaking out

The treasurer and the PM

Frydenberg was, for a time, a close supporter of Morrison. Recalling the period during the COVID crisis when he lived with Morrison at the Lodge, Frydenberg now feels “in hindsight some professional distance would have been prudent”. Reflecting on some of Morrison’s public statements, he remarks: “I could see how some women might have an issue with him”. He was also worried that Morrison “could come across as evasive and impulsive”.

Morrison had secretly appointed himself to five ministries, including installing himself as a second treasurer from May 2021 to May 2022. When he found out in late 2022, Frydenberg thought it was not the act of a friend. He also describes it as an act that would “undermine a fundamental principle of responsible government – that it is always clear which ministers are responsible for which departments”.

Frydenberg refers to approaches from mostly moderate colleagues to challenge Morrison during the run-up to the 2022 election. He notes that opinion polls showed he was more popular than Morrison.

By that stage, it was not a high bar. Ryan had covered Kooyong in “vote Josh, get Morrison” signs. But Frydenberg also notes that Australia had just had seven prime ministers in 11 years; he doubted they would want an eighth.

The book, co-authored with journalist Gideon Haigh, is clearly written, with a broadly chronological structure. It is easy to read and there is a good selection of pictures. An index would have been a helpful addition.

One aspect that gets a bit tedious is Frydenberg’s repeated criticism of former Victorian premier Dan Andrews’ management of COVID lockdowns. He is also less than gracious about Ryan.

Frydenberg refers much more to his Jewish background in the book than I recall him doing as an active politician. The 2025 Bondi terror attack seems to have galvanised him. It is telling that most of the book’s prologue deals not with an account of his legacy as treasurer, but with that tragic event.

Historian Alex McDermott has distinguished post-Bondi Josh from pre-Bondi Josh. Unlike nearby seats such as Goldstein, which shadow treasurer Tim Wilson narrowly won back from teal Zoe Daniel in 2025, Kooyong does not have a particularly large Jewish population, so there is no reason to question the genuineness of the change.

We will have to wait to see whether Frydenberg returns to a low profile career in finance or goes on to provide the material for a second volume of memoirs.