Sorry, Matt Canavan, no one believes coal magic means everyone wins

Matt Canavan has an economics degree, graduating from the University of Queensland with first class honours. The Nationals senator and federal minister for resources worked at the Productivity Commission before he entered politics, first as a staffer for his colleague and friend Barnaby Joyce, before being elected to the Senate himself.

 Matt Canavan at the National Press Club on Wednesday. 

The economic pointy head backstory makes Canavan an unconventional National, a fact that doesn’t go unnoticed among his party room colleagues. It also makes some of his public commentary this week just that bit harder to get your head around.

In a busy week, where the government prosecuted but lost an attempt to steer its big business tax cut through the Senate, where Tony Abbott was so desperate for a “look at me” moment he launched Pauline Hanson’s new book, where the nation roiled inconsolably about the behaviour of our cricketers – Canavan fronted the National Press Club to try and generate a couple of headlines of his own.

Read Katherine Murphy’s story from The Guardian - “Sorry, Matt Canavan, no one believes coal magic means everyone wins.”

Everywhere Man Josh Frydenberg: The minister who could make or break the Turnbull government

Josh Frydenberg has always been a man in a hurry.

The scene when Josh Frydenberg's press
conference in South Australia was crashed
by state Premier Jay Weatherill.

By 35, he had achieved honours degrees in law and economics, studied at Oxford and Harvard, advised Alexander Downer and John Howard, and been head of global banking at Deutsche Bank. Determined to enter Parliament, he tried to blast long-time member Petro Georgiou out of Kooyong - a prestigious Melbourne seat that had been held by Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies. He lost. But by the next election in 2010 the seat was his.

A prodigious networker and media performer, Frydenberg was touted as a potential future leader as soon as he arrived in Canberra. No job, it seemed, would be enough to contain his enthusiasm and ambition. Then Malcolm Turnbull found it. 

Read Matthew Knott’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Everywhere Man Josh Frydenberg: The minister who could make or break the Turnbull government.”