The fight for Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s storied seat of Kooyong turned ugly after his campaign launch on Sunday, when challenger Monique Ryan accused the treasurer of misquoting her frail 87-year-old mother-in-law in an attempt to embarrass the “teal” independent.
Frydenberg rejected Ryan’s claim, saying he had quoted the elderly woman “word for word”.
Josh Frydenberg is surrounded by supporters at his campaign launch on Sunday.Credit:Chris Hopkins
At the high-energy launch, where Frydenberg acknowledged his seat was in danger and implored his supporters to harness the “power of the dark blue” to win, he told a story of running into a woman near a cafe who said she was voting for him. The woman was Ryan’s mother-in-law. When he asked why, Frydenberg claimed the woman said: “Because you know what you’re doing and you’re a nice person.”
The treasurer’s recounting of the conversation, which he also delivered at a private function days earlier, drew laughter from the crowd but angered Ryan.
“My mother-in-law was misquoted by Mr Frydenberg,” Ryan told The Age and the Herald. “She was not asked if her private conversation with him could be used in a public forum.” Ryan did not detail in what way her mother-in-law was misquoted.
“She is a frail 87-year-old lady who should not have been brought into the public spotlight in this way. It is beyond the pale that Mr Frydenberg would use my frail 87-year-old mother-in-law as the butt of his jokes for cheap laughs. It’s behaviour like that that has turned so many people in Kooyong away from Mr Frydenberg and the Liberal Party.”
Kooyong independent Monique Ryan at her campaign launch earlier this month.Credit:Aaron Francis
Ryan acknowledged her mother-in-law was a Liberal Party supporter but maintained Frydenberg’s account was inaccurate. The Age and the Herald did not attempt to contact the elderly woman because Ryan requested her family members be “left alone” and the “media accord us the privacy that Mr Frydenberg has failed to respect”.
Frydenberg rejected Ryan’s claims, telling The Age and the Herald on Sunday evening: “I was approached by a lady on Auburn Road. She said ‘Josh I’ll be voting for you’. I said ‘that’s nice’ and she said ‘I’m Monique Ryan’s mother-in law’. I said ‘why are you voting for me?’ and she said ‘because you know what you’re doing and you’re a nice person’.
“Those were her exact words. They are word for word. I said ‘thank you very much’.” Asked earlier on Sunday whether it was offensive to draw Ryan’s relatives into the campaign, Frydenberg said “absolutely no”.
It was “their camp that brought Ted Baillieu’s son into the debate,” Frydenberg said – a reference to former premier Ted Baillieu’s son, who is a volunteer for Ryan and suggested in an opinion piece that Frydenberg was not a “decent person”.
Rob Baillieu, volunteers manager for independent Kooyong candidate Monique Ryan.Credit:Simon Schluter
The acrimony comes in the week after Frydenberg’s campaign hired 10 private security guards to hunt down what he claims are Ryan-linked vandals drawing swastikas and Hitler moustaches on his posters, and after Ryan’s campaign reported to the federal police more than a hundred vandalised pieces of campaign material.
At his launch, Frydenberg warned that Ryan and her Climate 200 backers were “in bed” with Labor leader Anthony Albanese and invoked Robert Menzies’ “forgotten people”, John Howard’s “battlers” and Scott Morrison’s “quiet Australians” in urging against an inner-city uprising against the Liberal Party that could deliver a “chaotic” hung parliament.
His campaign team, which will spend more than $2 million in Kooyong, launched new “Keep Josh” billboards on the weekend in a bid to differentiate the Treasurer from Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who Frydenberg’s camp privately admit is suppressing support for the Liberals.
“If they vote for a so-called independent, they will get Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party,” the treasurer said. “This is the choice. And we know the Liberal Party represents the values and ideals of the quiet Australians.”
The treasurer’s electorate of Kooyong has been the seat of Liberal royalty. Former prime minister Robert Menzies held the electorate – in Melbourne’s inner east – for 32 years. Former opposition leader Andrew Peacock was also a member for Kooyong. Former prime minister John Howard said on Sunday Frydenberg would “win comfortably”.
Frydenberg, who spoke without notes, called Climate 200, which has provided half of Ryan’s campaign funding, a “political party” and argued Ryan, who was a Labor Party member between 2007 and 2010, would deliver a Labor government in the event of a hung parliament. He added that this was against the interests of Kooyong voters, who have never elected a Labor MP.
“This is the fight of my political life. It will be a very close contest,” he said.
Ryan said she took nothing for granted but was buoyed by “one of the biggest campaigns in Australian political history”.
The former paediatric neurologist said one in every 30 homes in Kooyong had her poster hanging in front of it and 37,500 had been door-knocked by her volunteers. About $1.4 million had been raised from 3000 donors, she said, and her campaign will be topped up with funding from the Climate 200 fundraising vehicle run by Simon Holmes a Court.
“It continues to build momentum,” she said.
Howard said: “I’m confident Josh will win quite comfortably because he’s very sensible and treating it as a serious challenge. People who treat a challenge seriously normally survive”. Howard lost his own seat of Bennelong in the 2007 election that brought Kevin Rudd to power.
Howard said he wanted to speak at Frydenberg’s launch but had a family christening, but said his “close friend” had a special energy and excelled as treasurer.
“The intensity of the Treasury portfolio is amazing and he has handled it extremely well. I’ve been very impressed with the way he has superintended the economic argument of the coalition,” he said.
Former prime minister John Howard, campaigning for the Liberal Party in his former seat of Bennelong.Credit:Renee Nowytarger
“He’s an ideal fit for Kooyong.”
Before Frydenberg spoke at the launch, a number of locals gave speeches in support of the treasurer. They included a bipolar man who said the MP was “fair dinkum”, a mum who said Frydenberg was “genuinely interested” in the wellbeing of her disabled son, an elderly women who appreciates the attention the treasurer affords her, and a dry cleaner who said Frydenberg was a pleasure to deal with when picking up his shirts.
Cut through the noise of the federal election campaign with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Sign up to our Australia Votes 2022 newsletter here.
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2022-05-01 19:00:00Z
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