The cynicism of Frydenberg is familiar — and tempting. It’s also grossly uncharitable |
Josh Frydenberg’s speech at Bondi Beach this week did not sound like anything produced by the Australian political system in a long time. That was its power.
It came outside of parliament, after office, after many years of offering caution. It was the most important moment of his public life because it stripped everything else away.
What remained was anger, grief and a refusal to sanitise reality.
Josh Frydenberg spoke passionately at Bondi.Credit: Matthew Absalom-Wong
There’s no shortage of people ready to reduce Frydenberg’s intervention to political calculation. A former treasurer who lost his seat in 2022’s landslide against the Morrison government. A potential return to public life. A moment of national grief. The cynicism is familiar — and tempting. It is also, as even his most hardened critics this week believe, grossly uncharitable.
What set Frydenberg’s address apart was not just its bluntness, but the fact that it came from someone speaking as a parent and as a Jew before speaking as a politician. During his 12 years in parliament, no one ever called Frydenberg a conviction politician, but here he spoke with the type of moral clarity now rarely heard in public life. That distinction mattered — and it was audible.
He spoke not in abstractions but from lived experience. As a father raising Jewish children in Melbourne, where their schools and synagogues now need armed guards and families calculate risk before attending public celebrations. This was not borrowed outrage. It was personal fear, publicly expressed. Unscripted and pointed.
“We, as a Jewish community, have been abandoned, and left alone by our government.........