Media tart, tennis obsessive and Robert Menzies fanboy: will Josh Frydenberg survive one of the government’s most difficult jobs – running the energy and environment portfolio – to one day fulfil his dream of becoming prime minister?
Josh Frydenberg has been up since 4am. This is the first thing he tells me, energetically, on arrival at the ABC studios in Melbourne’s Southbank on a cold winter’s morning in July. It’s still dark outside and Aunty’s employees trudge in drably, heads down against the cold. Suddenly, borne in on a literal gust of fresh air, Frydenberg enters: Menzies fanboy, former tennis ace, Environment and Energy Minister. He is brisk in a well-cut blue suit, chin upturned, flanked by advisers who clack importantly on their heels. His sleeplessness, which is a chronic problem, is not the result of angst or self-doubt. Frydenberg suffers from neither. Rather, it’s the side effect of a busy brain that is always jumping to the next thing; an aspirational mind that once dreamed of glory on the international tennis circuit and now has its sights set – all in good time – on politics’ big prize: the prime ministership.
Read the full article by Jaqueline Maley in The Good Weekend at The Sydney Morning Herald.