Josh Frydenberg has always been a man in a hurry.
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Get used to seeing this man
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Meet Josh Frydenberg - the cabinet minister with the unenviable job of developing the country's climate and energy policy.
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Get used to seeing this man
Meet Josh Frydenberg - the cabinet minister with the unenviable job of developing the country's climate and energy policy.
By 35, he had achieved honours degrees in law and economics, studied at Oxford and Harvard, advised Alexander Downer and John Howard, and been head of global banking at Deutsche Bank. Determined to enter Parliament, he tried to blast long-time member Petro Georgiou out of Kooyong - a prestigious Melbourne seat that had been held by Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies. He lost. But by the next election in 2010 the seat was his.
A prodigious networker and media performer, Frydenberg was touted as a potential future leader as soon as he arrived in Canberra. No job, it seemed, would be enough to contain his enthusiasm and ambition. Then Malcolm Turnbull found it.Â
Frydenberg, the Minister for Energy and the Environment, has become the Turnbull government's Everywhere Man. Some days it seems he has more issues to deal with than most other cabinet ministers put together. Speaking before a crucial COAG meeting on energy, he sounds almost overwhelmed by the role he has found himself in.
"The variety and volume of issues is constant," he says.
"On any one day, you can be dealing with issues relating to threatened species, world heritage listings, the Great Barrier Reef, Antarctica. And that's even before you get started on energy and emissions reductions."
Shock jock Alan Jones, who is sceptical of climate science, has already decided that Frydenberg has failed. "You are out ... your political career is finished," he tweeted this week.
Frydenberg laughed it off, noting Jones had made a similar prediction about Turnbull before he became Prime Minister.
"I don't think such an endorsement - or lack thereof - from Alan Jones will have any meaningful impact out there," he told ABC radio.
"There's no causal connection between what Alan Jones says and what actually happens in politics."
After last year's election, Turnbull combined two previously separate portfolios, energy and environment, into one super-ministry and handed it to Frydenberg.
It was always going to be a busy role, but no one knew energy policy was going to become one of the hottest political issues around.Â
"Who would have thought there would be a statewide blackout in South Australia, the closure of the Hazelwood power station and soaring gas prices all within a matter of months?" Frydenberg says.
Things have changed dramatically in the energy space.
From South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill "crash tackling" him at a press conference to newspaper headlines claiming the government was planning a "carbon tax" on cars, there's always the chance of a landmine exploding. On Thursday he had to slap down prominent backbencher Craig Kelly for saying people would die this winter because renewable energy was driving up power prices.Â
"There is never a dull moment," he says.
The job, Frydenberg explains, is complex on many levels. First there are the technicalities - you have to get your head around the details of thermal generation, intermittent supply and battery storage. The states also have significant power over energy policy, meaning the federal government has to take into account what they are doing. Then there are the politics.Â
To the left, the Coalition is unlikely to ever be able to do enough to make environmentalists happy. On the right, climate sceptics in the government would rather do nothing at all.
Last year Frydenberg said the government would examine an "emissions intensity scheme" in the electricity sector, but had to backtrack quickly and rule this out after a backbench rebellion. That's why the government is proceeding carefully with the key recommendation of the Finkel report: a new clean energy target.
At a special party room meeting after the report was released, Frydenberg gave his colleagues a 30-minute slideshow and spent three hours answering their questions.Â
It's now up to him to devise a solution that provides a credible answer on cutting carbon emissions while ensuring the power supply is affordable and reliable. And to do it without sparking a civil war in the government.Â
The policy debate over energy is being played out against an increasingly heated ideological debate between the Liberal Party's conservative and moderate wings.Â
Last week, Frydenberg took aim at former prime minister Tony Abbott's "constant interventions" and said all he was achieving was helping Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.Â
The statement was seen as significant because Frydenberg voted for Abbott in the 2015 leadership ballot and is regularly described as a "conservative".
That's despite him being one of the first government MPs publicly to support same-sex marriage.
Asked to define his world view, Frydenberg lists: "Freedom of speech, free enterprise and the power of the individual over the collective.
"People should not be judged by the labels they are given but by the strength of their values," he says. Â
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