The Man 'too big' for Australia?
I was fascinated to see that Malcolm Turnbull was this week elected leader of the Liberal Party in Australia, i.e. the Australian Conservatives, and therefore leader of the Australian Opposition.
Turnbull first made his name - in Britain as much as in Australia - back in 1987. As a young barrister, he humiliated the then British Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong, who had flown to Sydney to try to stop the publication of the book Spycatcher by the former MI5 officer Peter Wright. Turnbull won the case and, with tough cross-examination, forced Armstrong to admit his infamous phrase "economical with the truth".
I knew Turnbull quite well at Oxford in the late 1970s, when he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a brash, abrasive speaker in the Union. On one infamous occasion he almost came to fisticuffs at one of my debates with the then Liberal MP Clement Freud (for reasons I now forget).
Since then he's become the richest man in Australian politics, and I don't think I've ever known anyone who's enjoyed such success in so many fields - four by my reckoning.
- Journalism where he worked as a TV reporter whilst still a student in Sydney, and then as a reporter on Harry Evans's Sunday Times whilst he was supposedly studying at Oxford.
- The law, as explained above.
- In business, where he and the son of the former Australian PM Gough Whitlam founded a highly successful investment bank Whitlam Turnbull. His bank was eventually taken over by Goldman Sachs, and Turnbull became Chairman of Goldman Sachs, Australia. He also made a fortune from co-founding, and then selling the Australian internet service provider OzEmail.
- And finally in politics, where he led the Republican Movement which forced the 1999 referendum - ultimately unsuccessful - on whether Australia should ditch the monarchy.
And now, after only four years as an MP, and a brief stint in John Howard's now fallen government, he's become Leader of the Australian Opposition.
Yet, strangely, Turnbull's maternal great-uncle was the 1930s left-wing British Labour Party leader George Lansbury.
Malcolm may not like me saying so publicly, but I've always felt Australia's a bit small for a man of his talents and huge ambition.
I'm Michael Crick, and I'm Newsnight's political editor. My guiding rule is that in any story there's usually something the politicians would prefer the world not to know. My job is to find that out. Follow me on
Comment number 1.
At 20th Sep 2008, Paddy Briggs wrote:But how does he compare with the sleazy Howard in respect of moral principles?
Remember it was Howard you called the appalling Lynton Crosy into his campaigns to help him win the dimwitted, lamb-brained, dingo vote...
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