THESE ARE EXCERPTS FROM JOSH FRYDENBERG’S IMPRESSIVE FIRST SPEECH AS AN ELECTED OFFICIAL IN 2010
Standing before the parliament of our great country, I see my journey to this place in the continuum of my family’s story.
My grandparents on both sides were migrants from Europe. In the late 1930s Morrie and Leah Frydenberg came from Poland to Australia to seek a better life. They arrived while Europe was plunging into darkness.
The experience was different for my maternal grandparents, Sam and Ethel Strauss, and their young daughters, including my mother, who were interned in the Budapest ghetto by the Hungarian fascists. They survived and eventually made their way through displaced persons camps to Australia.
My great‐grandparents, and many relatives on both sides, perished in the Holocaust, but one who survived is with us today.
My great‐aunt Mary Frydenberg spent two years at Auschwitz. She was transferred back to Germany by the Nazis and then sent on a death march, but she escaped with the assistance of a humane German guard. In her run for freedom, she was given shelter by a Catholic priest—at great risk to him—before making her way to Australia.
Mary’s story serves us all as a constant reminder of hope, even in the presence of tragedy.
What drives us as Liberals are notions of individual liberty, individual responsibility and a fairness borne out of a particular kind of equality.
The equality which Liberals seek in a society is the equality of opportunity, not the other kind of equality—the equality of outcomes.
By mandating outcomes, the state removes responsibility from individuals and denies the worker, the student and the patient the opportunity to be the best that they can be. It seems to me that these two notions of equality reflect the fundamental fault lines between us and the members opposite. It is not a thin divide.
“How can we all be better off when the government targets independent and Catholic schools merely because parents are exercising choice?”
“The opportunity to prosper is given its best chance through competitive markets—the insight reached by Adam Smith more than two centuries ago.”
“It may appear a paradox but the first of my large thoughts is that we need to limit the government. Our government is too big.”
“We must always remember that whenever we create a new arm of bureaucracy or expand a field of activity, we are not spending our own money; we are spending the money of our citizens who look to us as the guardians of their wealth.”
“The reduction of our per capita consumption of energy and non‐renewable resources is necessary … but part of being responsible is knowing what it will cost, who it will impact and how communities and businesses will need to react.”
“There has never been a better time for innovative technologies, practices and solutions.It seems inexplicable that in Australia we have yet to have a constructive and thorough debate about nuclear power, the only baseload, carbon neutral energy source.”
“How can we all be better off when the government discourages private health insurance at a time when the public system is overburdened?
“Our alliance with the United States is the cornerstone of our national security strategy. It must be protected and defended by both sides of the House.Our friendship and common purpose rests upon more than Realpolitik; it reflects our values, traditions and commitment to the democratic ideal.”
My vision is to achieve what Menzies termed ‘civilised capitalism’, unleashing the power of the individual and his enterprise while always providing a safety net for those who despite their best efforts are unable to cope.
These are my motivations, my cause and my way, and they not negotiable.
