1. Joshua Anthony Frydenberg was born on 17 July 1971 and is an Australian former politician who served as the treasurer of Australia and deputy leader of the Liberal Party from 2018 to 2022.
43 Facts About Josh Frydenberg
1. 2.
Josh Frydenberg served as a member of parliament for the division of Kooyong from 2010 to 2022.
3.
Josh Frydenberg worked for Deutsche Bank until his election to the Australian House of Representatives at the 2010 federal election.
4.
At the 2022 federal election, Josh Frydenberg suffered a significant swing against him, and lost his seat to the teal independent candidate Monique Ryan.
5.
Josh Frydenberg became the first sitting treasurer to lose his seat since Ted Theodore at the 1931 election.
6.
Josh Frydenberg's mother, Erika Strausz, is a psychologist and University of Melbourne professor and his father Harry is a general surgeon.
7.
Josh Frydenberg's mother was a Jewish Hungarian born in 1943 who arrived in Australia in 1950 as a stateless child from a refugee camp after escaping the Holocaust.
8.
Josh Frydenberg's great aunt, Mary Frydenberg, is a victim of the Holocaust; she spent 2 years at the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp.
9.
Josh Frydenberg's father is Jewish; his grandparents emigrated to Australia from Poland in the 1930s.
10.
Josh Frydenberg's grandfather owned a haberdashery store, along with two other Jewish families, with locations in Colac, Camperdown, and Mortlake.
11.
Josh Frydenberg was educated at Jewish schools Bialik College and Mount Scopus Memorial College.
12.
Josh Frydenberg lobbied his parents, unsuccessfully, to drop out of high school to pursue a career in tennis.
13.
Josh Frydenberg played against Mark Philippoussis and Pat Rafter, and represented Australia at two World University Games.
14.
Josh Frydenberg completed honours degrees in economics and law at Monash University, where he became president of the Law Students Society, before working at Mallesons Stephen Jaques, a large Australian commercial law firm.
15.
Josh Frydenberg won both a Fulbright Scholarship to attend Yale University and a Commonwealth Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford.
16.
Josh Frydenberg opted to accept the latter, completing a Master of International Relations at University College, Oxford, with a thesis on Indonesian politics.
17.
Josh Frydenberg was best man at Hunt's wedding, and Hunt was a groomsman at Josh Frydenberg's wedding.
18.
Josh Frydenberg was one of seven Liberal MPs in the 46th Parliament of Australia who obtained degrees at an Oxbridge or Ivy League university, the others being Alan Tudge, Angus Taylor, Andrew Laming, Dave Sharma, Greg Hunt and Paul Fletcher.
19.
In 1999, Josh Frydenberg worked as an assistant adviser to Attorney-General Daryl Williams before becoming an adviser to Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer, a post he held until 2003.
20.
In 2006, Josh Frydenberg announced that he was seeking Liberal preselection for Kooyong, a safe Liberal seat in Melbourne's eastern suburbs.
21.
Josh Frydenberg was contesting it against the incumbent member, Petro Georgiou, who had held the seat since 1994.
22.
Georgiou won the nomination by gaining 62 of the 85 delegates' votes, with Josh Frydenberg receiving 22 votes and a third candidate, Alastair Armstrong, receiving one vote.
23.
Josh Frydenberg's candidacy was supported by references from former Prime Minister John Howard and former Opposition Leader Andrew Peacock.
24.
Josh Frydenberg was only the fifth person to represent this traditionally safe non-Labor seat in 88 years.
25.
Josh Frydenberg held the seat that was once held by Australia's longest-serving Prime Minister, Robert Menzies.
26.
The first Jewish Liberal elected to the House of Representatives, in his maiden speech, Josh Frydenberg recounted the story of his Jewish grandparents' and great aunt's migration to Australia from Nazi controlled Europe and lauded the contribution of migrants to communities within his electorate.
27.
Josh Frydenberg enunciated his belief in small government, called for stronger ties with Asia while maintaining a solid alliance with the US and proposed a target of having two Australian universities within the world's top ten by 2030.
28.
Josh Frydenberg is a member of the centre-right faction of the Liberal Party.
29.
Josh Frydenberg has at times been the target of antisemitic attacks, such as defacing his election material with Nazi icons.
30.
At the 2013 federal election, Josh Frydenberg was re-elected with the largest swing to the Liberal Party in the seat since 1975.
31.
Josh Frydenberg was sworn in as a Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister on 18 September 2013, with particular responsibility for the government's deregulation agenda.
32.
On 23 December 2014, Josh Frydenberg was sworn in as Assistant Treasurer in a ministerial reshuffle and replaced Arthur Sinodinos, who resigned due to delays in an ICAC inquiry.
33.
In March 2020, the Federal Court ruled that Josh Frydenberg was eligible to sit in parliament.
34.
Josh Frydenberg was awarded legal costs of $410,000 against Staindl, of which Staindl paid him $350,000.
35.
Julie Bishop did not seek re-election as deputy leader, and in the resulting ballot Josh Frydenberg won a majority in the first round with 46 votes, while Trade Minister Steven Ciobo received 20 and Health Minister Greg Hunt received 16.
36.
In July 2019 a Kooyong resident petitioned the High Court, as Court of Disputed Returns, for a ruling that Josh Frydenberg had been ineligible owing to foreign citizenship, being allegedly a citizen of Hungary.
37.
On 23 November 2019 it was reported that Josh Frydenberg had received confirmation from the Hungarian government that no record could be found of Hungarian citizenship of himself or his mother.
38.
Josh Frydenberg reportedly had a close working relationship with Morrison and "often stayed overnight at Kirribilli".
39.
In July 2022, Josh Frydenberg joined investment bank Goldman Sachs as a senior regional advisor for the Asia Pacific.
40.
In September 2023, Josh Frydenberg was appointed as the chairman of Goldman Sachs' Australian and New Zealand operations, a move which led Josh Frydenberg to rule himself out of re-contesting Kooyong in 2025.
41.
Josh Frydenberg issued a statement in response stating he did not intend to stand at the next election.
42.
In May 2024, Josh Frydenberg examined the rise of antisemitism in a Sky News Australia documentary Never Again: The Fight Against Antisemitism.
43.
Josh Frydenberg is a supporter of the Carlton Football Club, and served as the club's number-one ticket holder for 2021 and 2022.