RORY SALAZAR | Finance | Contact
The Advocate unreservedly apologises to those present at Goldman Sachs’ Collins Street offices yesterday. In particular to those who witnessed the misunderstanding between this Masthead and Goldman’s Senior Regional Adviser for the Asia Pacific, Mr Josh Frydenberg.
Having had time to reflect on yesterday’s events, the Advocate now realises what went wrong. It is appropriate we now clear up any confusion as to what happened in order to not only apologise to Goldman Sachs but to absolve Mr Frydenberg of any wrong doing.
Thing is, while Mr Frydenberg had rightly assumed the Advocate was there to interview him on the string of recent acquisitions he had carried out for Goldman, that wasn’t why we were there.
The Advocate was in fact there to interview him in his capacity as former Treasurer of Australia, to ask how he felt about the budget surplus that his successor – a Labor successor no less – has achieved.
In hindsight, the Advocate realises why Mr Frydenberg responded with such unbridled rage.
In the view of this Masthead, a human response to that devastating news given he left the country in record deficit was fair.
We see that now.
The Advocate did not intend any damages to occur to Goldman’s Collins Street offices, nor does it condone violence of any kind.
In saying that, Mr Frydenberg’s fury is understandable in this instance. It is no secret that Liberal Party members have always prided themselves on being far superior economic managers than their Labor counterparts.
For us to have brought up the $80b turnaround that Labor is poised to achieve since Mr Frydenberg forecast his pre-election budget only 13 months ago, this was also clearly an insensitive thing to have done. It compounded the anger within a man who by all rights should’ve been Prime Minister by now.
Lord knows he deserved it more than Scotty From Marketing.
That this will be the first budget surplus in 15 years is something we should not have discussed. It obviously reflects poorly on Mr Frydenberg and more broadly the Liberal Party itself.
We see that now and apologise.
