Josh Frydenberg is in trouble, and he knows it. Three weeks before polling day, billboards asking voters to “keep Josh” started appearing in his Melbourne electorate of Kooyong.
At a forum hosted by Sky News on Thursday, the treasurer said the billboards were a reminder to voters that if they like him they should vote for him, regardless of their frustrations with the broader Liberal party.
“People need to know that if they want to keep me as the local member but they may have an issue with something that the Liberal party has said or done, and they want to give us a kick for that, at the end of the day that may not leave me as the local member,” he says. “Which is, of course, not what I want.”
Kooyong used to be the jewel in the Liberal party’s crown, the seat of its longest-serving and most revered prime minister, Robert Menzies. Its constituents have voted Liberal for so long it has become habit. That a sitting member, the most senior Victorian in the current cabinet, would ask people to vote for him despite the Liberal party, not because of it, would once have been unthinkable.
The candidate who has Frydenberg on the run is Prof Monique Ryan, a paediatric neurologist who was running the neurology department at the Royal Children’s hospital before deciding to run for parliament. It is not possible, she told the Sky News forum, to separate Frydenberg’s personal record from that of the government.
“I don’t agree that Frydenberg is a moderate Liberal,” she said. “We are defined by our actions, not our words. Frydenberg … has never crossed the floor on a matter of conscience.”
The campaign has, at times, become nasty. Frydenberg kicked off his campaign launch with an anecdote about meeting Ryan’s mother-in-law, who told him she would be voting Liberal. Ryan accused Frydenberg of breaking an agreement not to bring family members into the campaign or make personal attacks. She then called Frydenberg the “treasurer for New South Wales”, a remark Frydenberg said was a personal insult.
Ryan’s campaign is backed by Climate 200, an independent group funding independent political campaigns in the “teal” electorates, wealthy blue-chip seats whose progressive position on social and environmental policies no longer aligns with those of a Coalition which is steadily moving to the right.
Polling conducted by Climate 200 over several weeks places Ryan’s primary vote in the high 20s to low 30s, and Frydenberg’s in the mid 30s to low 40s. To comfortably hold the electorate, Frydenberg would need a primary vote of more than 45.
The polling was conducted by the Redbridge Group. Director Kos Samaras says the “Keep Josh” campaign is not working.
“Josh’s problem is not him,” Samaras says. “His problem is the party and the leader. The problem for Josh is that he is asking people to vote for Scott Morrison.”
The prime minister has skipped over Kooyong on the campaign trail, attending a local synagogue for passover but not staging any formal election events in the area. Frydenberg has defended his absence saying he is the person best placed to defend the government’s record in Kooyong.
But defending that record is one of the reasons Frydenberg is on the nose. Samaras says respondents to polls have independently raised his criticism of Victoria during the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns, during which he called the Daniel Andrews governments’ Covid rules “ludicrous and unacceptable”, as a mark against the treasurer.
Frydenberg has acknowledged that he is in the fight of his life in the seat. His family sat for a front page photo and double-page spread in the Herald Sun. He has spent big on leaflets and billboards. Voters in Kooyong have provided Guardian Australia with copies of more than 20 mail-outs from Frydenberg’s campaign, including an endorsement from the CEO of Guide Dogs Victoria, Karen Hayes, which resulted in her being stood down from her position; copies of old speeches; a six-page booklet outlining his “local plan” for Kooyong; and pamphlets warning that a vote for an independent, in scare quotes, is a “vote for uncertainty”.
Ryan’s campaign, in contrast, has sent out six mail-outs setting out her key policies: an independent national integrity commission, meaningful action on climate, meaningful action on gender equality.
It has also issued 3,000 corflutes and posters, which a campaign spokesperson says puts one in every 25 houses in the electorate.
Frydenberg’s face is on the side of every telephone box and most billboards. It is also on houses – in almost every street with placards supporting Ryan, there is also a placard supporting Frydenberg.
Greens candidate Piers Mitchem is also well-represented in the corflute battle. Labor is barely noticeable.
Cost of living pressures hit hard
George Theodore, an independent coffee shop owner in Balwyn, down the western, more conservative end of the electorate, says that while many of his customers appear to have “checked out” of the political conversation, it is hard to forget an election is on. “I have never seen so many politicians,” he says. “People are more aware that there is competition this year.”
Politicians aside, foot traffic on Whitehorse Road, the main shopping strip, is way down. A row of businesses across the street from him are standing empty, with “For lease” signs in the windows. Even the banks are moving: both the Bendigo Bank and ANZ branches have swapped from the north side of the road to the south in the past two years to escape escalating rent.
“Even they can’t afford the rent,” Theodore says.
Theodore has operated Balwyn Coffee Centre on Whitehorse Road for 10 years. His business survived Melbourne’s six lockdowns – “People are still buying coffee” – but says the strip “hasn’t recovered”.
Outside Theodore’s shop, two undecided voters nominate the rising cost of living as their most pressing concern. That should be good news for a treasurer who is campaigning on the back of his economic management credentials, but Frydenberg is struggling to claim credit for positive economic indicators, like the low unemployment rate, without also taking blame for the negatives, such as the Reserve Bank’s decision this week to raise the cash rate for the first time since 2010.
Toward the other end of the electorate, at Kew Junction, one of the areas that flipped to the Greens in the 2019 election, Chan Sreiy says cost of living pressures are hitting hard. He has owned and operated Kew Breadworks bakery and cafe for 19 years. Frydenberg and Ryan have both visited him on the hustings, and asked to put posters in his window. Only Frydenberg’s remains – Ryan’s poster disappeared one day while Sreiy was serving customers.
“I would say 60% of the customers who come in here are very unhappy because they work too hard,” Sreiy says. “The price of everything has just gone up through the roof.”
