ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Former Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has been spotted in recent months riding many of Melbourne’s night trams alone with his headphones on.
On one such occasion, the once-Member for Kooyong was seen to be listening to Radiohead’s Kid A, which is something the private citizen says helped him get through the darkest times after the somewhat-shocking election result.
Mr Frydenberg spoke to The Advocate this morning via wireless telephone.
“I went for my first jog in months, I feel much better,” he said.
“But yeah, it’s true. I have spent a lot of nights, sitting in trams listening to Radiohead. Not much of their weird stuff, more of their sad stuff. It’s just something you’ve got to do when you have your life turned upside down like that,”
“You just need time to feel sorry for yourself but I’ve turned a corner now. You know, what Malcolm [Turnbull] said about politics is pretty accurate. At Goldman Sachs, he could just fire someone for being incompetent. You can’t do that in politics. As much as he wanted to fire George Christensen and Alex Hawke. He couldn’t. You just can’t fire people in politics. Now that I’m going back to the private sector, I don’t have to put up with dumb – can I swear ?”
Our reporter indicated that he could.
“I don’t have to put up with dumb bastards like that anymore. I’m finding solace in that.”
Not since losing to Darren Cahill in the second round of the 1989 Kooyong Classic, he says, has he done something like this.
“Yeah [laughs] I wore out two My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anything cassettes after that,” he said.
“At night alone on a tram heading to Hawthorn.”
More to come.
