![\"Brittany](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791775332_341_af71def990bb09f8d3ae9269dff8c75c2d45963c.png\")
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October 12, 2026 \u2014 11:48am<\/p>\n
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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n No gift articles left<\/p>\n You’ve used all of your gift articles. 3 more will become available on the 1st of every month.<\/p>\n Close<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n Josh Frydenberg has criticised the Liberals under Angus Taylor\u2019s leadership, arguing the party must change in the face of an existential threat.<\/p>\n The former treasurer, who was considered a future Liberal leader before losing his seat in 2022, has stoked speculation he will run again<\/a> with the release of a new memoir, which includes criticism the party has lost touch with its roots, as well as his proposals for policy remedies.<\/p>\n The intervention creates a fresh headache for Taylor, who immediately shut down Frydenberg\u2019s suggestion that a Coalition government should raise the GST to offset income and business tax cuts.<\/p>\n Taylor returns to parliament this week after addressing the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Brisbane on Saturday, where he was heckled by One Nation loyalists in the audience and ridiculed by the next speaker, Pauline Hanson<\/a>.<\/p>\n In his keynote speech, as the first opposition leader to appear at the annual right-wing talkfest, Taylor acknowledging the mistakes of the former Coalition government, including \u201cmore-than-was-needed\u201d spending during the COVID pandemic, signing up to net zero, and \u201callowing immigration numbers to creep up, especially student and bridging visas\u201d.<\/p>\n On Sunday night, Frydenberg said Taylor was copping criticism from \u201clots of corners\u201d by people saying the party needed to do better.<\/p>\n \u201cThe polls are showing that the Liberal Party is at an all-time low,\u201d Frydenberg told 60 Minutes. \u201cAnd so, things have to change. Because there\u2019s something existential about the threat that I think the party now faces.\u201d<\/p>\n Frydenberg denied the book was a pitch for the prime ministership, but when asked if he still had aspirations to lead the country, said he had not closed that door.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t need to rush to a decision. The next election is 18 months away,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A political comeback for the former treasurer would involve a protracted campaign for a seat with weak preference flows that the Liberals failed to recapture in 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n He would also have to win a preselection contest, which some senior Victorian Liberal operatives unsupportive of Frydenberg want resolved by the first quarter of next year. But Frydenberg\u2019s supporters suggest he will seek to delay an announcement on his candidacy until the latest possible moment, as he assesses the political terrain and the likelihood of winning the seat.<\/p>\n The Coalition is trailing Labor and One Nation in the polls, and Taylor is behind Anthony Albanese and Pauline Hanson as preferred prime minister, though he edged up 1 point in the latest Resolve Political Monitor<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Shadow treasurer Tim Wilson, who in 2025 became the first Liberal to reclaim a seat from a teal independent, said on Monday he had no issue with Frydenberg putting himself forward at the next election.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s always good to have candidates who want to step up and run and make sure we pick up seats so that Angus Taylor can be prime minister of this country,\u201d Wilson told Radio National.<\/p>\n Fellow Coalition frontbenchers Andrew Bragg and Angie Bell, who Frydenberg reveals in his book were part of a meeting of moderates in 2021 to discuss concerns about then prime minister Scott Morrison\u2019s leadership, have urged the former treasurer to run.<\/p>\n In the 60 Minutes interview, Frydenberg said he stood by his decision not to challenge Morrison for the leadership at that time.<\/p>\n Related Article \u201cDuring my time in office, there were numerous changes of prime ministership and leadership of the Liberal Party, and in each time, I stood by the incumbent, and I don\u2019t regret that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Frydenberg said he was more disappointed by the multiple ministries scandal, in which Morrison secretly swore himself into the portfolios of several colleagues, including Frydenberg.<\/p>\n \u201cI was angry about it, and I felt undermined. It was completely unnecessary for him to do that, and I think a lot of colleagues felt blindsided,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI made it very clear that it was unnecessary, and he said to me that he would have made the same decision again, and I said you can\u2019t be serious. So that\u2019s something that he\u2019ll obviously have to explain for himself. But it has damaged our relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n Current Kooyong MP, independent Monique Ryan, on Monday said she was not bothered who the Liberal Party put up as a candidate at the next election. She added that Frydenberg had his chance with voters.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was the member for that seat for 12 years, and in 2022, our community rejected him because they were so frustrated with his inability to affect any change to government policy on climate change,\u201d Ryan told Seven\u2019s Sunrise.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople were unhappy with his economic management. People were very unhappy with the way that he punched down on Victoria during the COVID years. I\u2019m not sure what has changed since that time that Mr Frydenberg now thinks that the community will welcome him back with open arms.\u201d<\/p>\n She accused Frydenberg of being too focused on ongoing prime ministerial ambitions instead of his community.<\/p>\n \u201cHe doesn\u2019t speak much about Kooyong, and that\u2019s the part of the world that I\u2019m most focused on.\u201d<\/p>\n After initially avoiding Frydenberg\u2019s claims last week that her supporters had run a campaign rife with personal abuse<\/a>, Ryan said on Monday she rejected that characterisation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt does not match with my own recollections or the recollections of the more than 2000 people who volunteered with me. We know that we conducted a campaign run with integrity and in a good spirit,\u201d she told reporters in Canberra.<\/p>\n Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n No gift articles left<\/p>\n You’ve used all of your gift articles. 3 more will become available on the 1st of every month.<\/p>\n Close![\"Former](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/6716eb3b9c02a0d99d8f73da9fe0ff4523e10e59.jpeg\")
Former treasurer Josh Frydenberg has left the door open to a political comeback.Eddie Jim<\/p>\n![\"Josh](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791775333_665_5756cb395486090b1b93f77384c4d27c1bf00a07.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Independent](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1bcaed2741bb5c53284a13100fd386402b750b6e.jpeg\")
Independent MP Monique Ryan said Kooyong had already rejected Frydenberg.Luis Enrique Ascui<\/p>\n![\"Brittany](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791775335_612_af71def990bb09f8d3ae9269dff8c75c2d45963c.png\")
Brittany Busch<\/a> is a federal politics reporter for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"October 12, 2026 \u2014 11:48am Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":924950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-924949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/924950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}