Why Liberal powerbrokers will be reading Josh Frydenberg’s new memoir as a leadership pitch

There’s been no shortage of “will he, won’t he” speculation over a possible return to politics for former federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg since he lost his seat of Kooyong to teal Monique Ryan at the 2022 election. Most of it, we’d guess, has had co-operation from the man himself.

Frydenberg continues to tell people close to him that he’s been enjoying life outside politics and hasn’t made any decisions about a return. But how else to interpret the looming publication of his new memoir, A Grateful Son, out next month?

The mid-life memoir, which was written with the help of Gideon Haigh and is out through News Corp’s HarperCollins, charts Frydenberg’s introduction to politics working for former prime minister John Howard and former Liberal leader Alexander Downer. It goes over his 12 years in parliament and covers his work against antisemitism.

The book has been in the works for years, so our guess is there may not be explicit tips for Opposition Leader Angus Taylor. But we’d be surprised if there aren’t at least a handful of Liberal Party powerbrokers who read the tome as a leadership pitch.

Still, we don’t expect to hear the former treasurer make the case explicitly at the string of events he has scheduled to coincide with the publication.

Howard will launch the book in Sydney. In Melbourne, Frydenberg will appear alongside Jennifer Westacott, whom he worked with closely when she was chief of the Business Council of Australia. Other Melbourne appearances include the Wheeler Centre on October 22. The Age’s state political editor, Chip Le Grand, will host an in-conversation with Frydenberg for the Mount Scopus Foundation on October 28, and the former treasurer will be in conversation with Gideon Kline at the Jewish Museum of Australia on October 29.

Launches are set to go ahead in Brisbane, where Queensland premier David Crisafulli is scheduled to speak, and in Western Australia, where Frydenberg will appear alongside Premier Roger Cook. Downer will launch the book in South Australia.

Kylie’s secret location

Home-grown global pop queen Kylie Minogue returned to her roots in more ways than one, her pre-game extravaganza at the AFL grand final being a love letter to Melbourne and to moments in her career.

From a giant inflatable Sherrin football to her famous bum tap, CBD has been spinning around uncovering the secrets behind Minogue’s sensational performance at the MCG on Saturday.

Minogue’s 20 minutes of pop perfection took eight months to create and saw her mine her personal history, even setting up a replica of her stage and rehearsing for a fortnight on an oval at a private school in Camberwell a little more than a Malcolm Blight-style torpedo kick from her childhood home. A literal camp Kylie!

How the location stayed under wraps is a mystery – maybe something to do with NDAs?

It would have been even more of a nostalgia play if the rehearsal HQ had been Minogue’s old school, Camberwell High, but, alas, it wasn’t. However, there was a nod to her school days with a current Camberwell High student cast as young Kylie in the MCG production.

In an ode to Melbourne footy history and music, during the video that opened her grand final show, Minogue recited the lyrics to the renowned Mike Brady AFL song One Day In September.

“I always knew I wanted to reference Mike Brady’s footy anthem in some way,” Minogue said.

“For this occasion we decided I would recite the lyrics and have the melody refrain mixed into [her recent song] Light Up. I wanted the footy crowd to feel the nostalgia of that iconic song in an unexpected way.”

As for the 4.5-metre-high, 8.5-metre-long inflatable Kylie-fied footy that was a centrepiece of the show, it was specially created in Amsterdam.

“There’s very few people that can build inflatables anywhere near the quality that you can get out of Amsterdam,
so we went to a specialist there who built it and shipped it over,” Mushroom Group’s Travis Hogan, the technical producer for the AFL grand final, told CBD on Sunday.

“Then we flew a technician out from Amsterdam to train our team on how to work with it.”

Hogan described Minogue’s show, which had her at one point flying around the MCG on a suspended podium, as one for the ages.

“It’s the largest entertainment production ever in Australian sport outside of an Olympic or Commonwealth Games,” he said.

Bringing the performance, which was a collaboration between the AFL, Minogue’s team and the Mushroom Group, to life took a crew of 300 and featured a cast of 200 including dancers, musicians and singers.

Add to that 40 pyrotechnic pots around Minogue’s stage and another 30 or 40 on the MCG roof and a show becomes a spectacular.

“She [Kylie] is heavily involved in the show. A lot of artists would just hand that over to the creative team, and she has a great creative team. However, key decisions are always made by Kylie,” Hogan said.

“She is just so involved. Her work ethic is second to none. She puts in, the rehearsals are constant, they’re exhausting and she just keeps going and going and going until she’s got it the way she wants it, which is fabulous.”

The biggest secret of Minogue’s grand final performance, of course, is what it cost. Some say she was paid $3 million for the gig. Others say the total cost of the show was far above that. We may never solve this particular mystery, but we’d say it was worth every cent.

Chris Fagan enters his festival era

Brisbane Lions coach Chris Fagan appeared to be best on ground at his team’s grand final victory celebration, being seen riding the shoulders of club captain Harris Andrews in the middle of a dance-floor throng at the Pullman hotel in East Melbourne on Saturday night.

And the footage of him joining his players to sing Queen’s We Are the Champions was, in CBD’s opinion, pretty epic.

It was a different side to the normally reserved footy mastermind that turned up on social media on Sunday. Multiple people who were at the Lions’ official post-match party shared clips of Fagan enthusiastically – and we want to add responsibly – joining the victorious team in the celebrations.

Fagan, 65, looked to be holding on for dear life as Andrews chaired him through a mosh pit of Lions teammates and supporters at the celebration. With other players making sure he was steady on Andrews’ shoulders, Fagan looked like he was ready to enter his festival era.

If nothing else, this was a win he wanted to enjoy – after all, it completed a rare grand final three-peat for the club, making the celebrations even sweeter.

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