Last week, Josh Frydenberg was having a giggle in his Canberra office with Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Seven days later, the Environment and Energy Minister must feel like he's been on the end of one of the Hollywood martial artist's roundhouse kicks.
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Green Army in retreat
The Greens are celebrating reports that Tony Abbott's 'Green Army' is to be axed, but Malcolm Turnbull is declining to confirm its demise. Courtesy ABC News 24.
On Wednesday, Mr Frydenberg was in spectacular retreat over carbon pricing, having explicitly put an electricity industry emissions trading scheme on the discussion table on Monday, before disowning the idea entirely by midweek.
At the same time, Fairfax Media has learned, his personal newsletter was dropping into letterboxes in his Melbourne electorate of Kooyong featuring another recently thorny issue for the minister.
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...I am also focused on delivering our election commitments to the Kooyong community including a safe house for homeless women, CCTV cameras in Kew, Green Army projects along the Yarra River and Koonung Creek, solar grants to community organisations and a series of grants to upgrade our sporting facilities.
- Josh Frydenberg, Kooyong Community News, Summer 2016/17
The holiday season edition of "Kooyong Community News" lists some of Mr Frydenberg's priorities for the blue ribbon Liberal electorate over coming months.
"I am . . . focused on delivering on our election commitments to the Kooyong community, including safe houses for homeless women, CCTV cameras in Kew, [and] Green Army projects along the Yarra River," he wrote.
The newsletter appears to have been printed before Mr Frydenberg all-but confirmed on Monday that the Green Army would be scrapped for a budget saving of $350 million.
When news emerged of the demise of the Green Army, Tony Abbott's signature environmental policy, Mr Frydenberg lamented that savings had to be found "across the board" by the budget razor gang.
"The Green Army has been a successful program," he said.
"It's led to the planting of more than two million trees, the clearing of more than 90,000 hectares of weeds, but at the same time we're facing significant budget pressures and obviously savings do need to be found."
Mr Abbott, who was not at all pleased with the re-emergence of talk about carbon pricing, made it abundantly clear he saw a future for the Green Army, criticising the government for "axing your own policy for the Greens policy".
In return for their support of the 15 per cent backpacker tax, the Greens were promised $100 million for Landcare - an amount likely to be funded by the liquidation of the Green Army.
A spokesman for Mr Frydenberg said he had nothing to add to statements he made on the Green Army this week.