First Among Equals (13 page)

ANTHONY JOHN ABBOTT

CAPTAIN

TERM

18 September 2013-14 September 2015

T
ony Abbott was a ferociously successful opposition leader during the Gillard years but on winning office was seen in his first year not to have transformed fully from opposition attack-dog to prime-ministerial leader. Socially conservative, Abbott, a committed Christian, promised no surprises and sound economic management, in contrast to the chaos of the previous Labor years.

Tony Abbott became the seventh Australian born overseas to become prime minister, and his ancestors came from England, Wales and the Netherlands. His Australian-born mother Fay (née Peters) was living in England when she met and married Richard Henry ‘Dick' Abbott, who was born in Newcastle upon Tyne. His father had emigrated to Australia with his family in 1940 at the age of sixteen and later returned to the UK where he met and married Fay Peters. Abbott was born in London on 4 November 1957 and with his parents returned to live in Australia in 1960. His father went on to run a large orthodontics practice, the family living in Chatswood on Sydney's North Shore. Abbott attended St Aloysius primary school at Kirribilli, not far from the official prime minister's residence in Sydney.

He then attended high school at St Ignatius' College near Lane Cove in Sydney, a Jesuit school that produced a number of prominent politicians, among
them some who would serve as ministers in the Abbott government's cabinet. Abbott's religion has played a large part in his life although he says he feels that, unlike himself, some people are obsessed by it. As a young man he was influenced by the Catholic intellectual and political activist BA Santamaria. In 1984, aged 26, he entered St Patrick's Seminary, training to be a priest and aiming, in the Jesuit tradition, to ‘be a man for others', before deciding to leave in 1987, saying he was a square peg in a round hole and did not have what it took to stay on.

Before that, Abbott had attended Sydney University, where he had graduated with a Bachelor of Economics and Bachelor of Laws. During this time he became heavily involved in student politics and became president of the Students' Representative Council. He organised a demonstration in favour of the dismissal of the Whitlam government and later a rally in support of British actions in the Falklands War. He won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, attending Queen's College and graduating in 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts. He was a student boxer and won two Blues while at Oxford.

It was after his return to Australia that he decided to become a priest and, on leaving the seminary, worked briefly as manager of a concrete company. It was journalism that saw him enter public life. He had written for the Sydney University student newspaper,

Honi Soit,
the
Catholic Weekly
and then began writing articles for
The Bulletin
weekly magazine. He later became a journalist working for
The Australian
national daily newspaper.

In 1990, he was working as press secretary to the federal opposition leader, John Hewson. Although he fell out with Hewson, Abbott came to notice and won the safe Liberal seat of Warringah in a by-election in 1994 and easily held it in 1996 when the Liberals, under John Howard, took office after thirteen years of Labor government. He has held the seat comfortably at each election. Abbott had already furthered his conservative credentials by playing a leading role in Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, where he built a strong relationship with fellow monarchist, John Howard. Abbott was to become a key figure in the successful anti-republic referendum campaign in 1999. He was in the outer ministry by 1998 and was promoted to cabinet in 2000, when Howard described Abbott as ‘effective . . . with an endearing style'. Opposition figures called him a ‘bomb thrower'.

In 2007, Labor won office and the Liberals began a period of leadership instability culminating in a successful challenge in December 2009 when Abbott narrowly defeated Malcom Turnbull to become opposition leader. He took the leadership with a strong commitment to indigenous affairs. His fitness regime
and brief swimwear, ‘budgie smugglers', had become part of his public profile. Although conservative on most social issues, he came out in support of his lesbian sister. In June 2011, Abbott for the first time overtook Julia Gillard in the opinion polls, having vigorously opposed a carbon tax and even a plan to create a food bowl in northern Australia.

Abbott led the Liberal and National Party coalition to victory in the federal election in September 2013, defeating Labor under Kevin Rudd. On his first day in office he introduced legislation to remove the carbon tax (and later the mining tax) and set in motion Operation Sovereign Borders to stop illegal arrivals into the country as part of his ‘Stop the Boats' promise while in opposition. He went on to set up a Royal Commission into trade unions, introduced amendments to the
Fair Work Act
and his government oversaw free-trade agreements with Japan, South Korea and China. But his government quickly fell in the opinion polls and Abbott's personal standing plummeted as well after the May budget, which was criticised for breaking promises and favouring spending cuts that would hit the poor and vulnerable far more than the wealthy. His government's legislation struggled in a hostile Senate where a number of independents joined Labor and the Greens in voting down bills.

Abbott, in his first year, made a number of sudden decisions – ‘Captain's Calls' – which angered many in his party especially when he re-introduced a limited Imperial Honours System and in January 2015 decided to make Prince Philip a Knight of the Order of Australia. His government's broken promises, inability to communicate policy and the role of his prime minister's office built resentment among backbench MPs, as well as continuing a prolonged slump in the polls.

One backbencher announced he would move a spill motion to open up the leadership for contest when the party next met. On 9 February 2015, Abbott's supporters defeated the spill motion 61 votes to 39, giving him political breathing space but leaving him still under intense pressure to improve his performance and the standing of the government, both still trailing far behind the Labor Party. The party put Abbott on six months' notice to become more consultative and inclusive in his political style.

A second budget reversed some of the more strident measures of the first surprise budget but Abbott continued to struggle in the polls. His ministers and backbenchers were regularly leaking to the media and it was clear political backbiting had only got worse, not better, since February. Matters came to a head when a leaked newspaper report said Abbott was planning a cabinet reshuffle, interpreted as a move against his
opponents – in particular Malcolm Turnbull, leader of the moderate liberal wing of the party. Amid drama no less intense than that of the Labor Party just a few years before, Turnbull announced a challenge on a Monday afternoon. By Monday evening it was all over with Turnbull taking the leadership 54 votes to 44. Deputy leader Julie Bishop won her position yet again. Bishop had been the person to formally break the news to Abbott that he no longer enjoyed majority support within the parliamentary party.

He left office still refusing to accept that he might have been the one to blame for his fall. His critics inside and outside parliament saw a talented and complex man who never got to grips with a leadership role, a man whose vision for Australia was clearly out of touch with mainstream opinion. His enemies described him as the worst Australian prime minister since William McMahon and his government's legislative program was the thinnest since the McMahon years.

MALCOLM BLIGH TURNBULL

‘RICH DUDE BECOMES PM'

TERM

15 September 2015-

N
ot since the rapid turnover of prime ministers after the resignation of Robert Menzies in 1966 – six prime ministers in just over six years by the time Whitlam came to office in 1972 – has there been such a revolving door of political leaders. Howard lost the 2007 election and his own seat, and then followed Rudd, Gillard, Rudd, Abbott and now Turnbull.

Like those before him, Turnbull, on his appointment, spoke of the future and an end to the sort of political style that led to his need to challenge Abbott, the man who six years previously challenged Turnbull as the Coalition's opposition leader and defeated him by one vote. He spoke of ‘renewal' as he appointed his first cabinet, an attempt to bridge the conservative and liberal wings of the party and its coalition partner, the National Party. He brought in more women – there had only been two women cabinet ministers in the Abbott years – and younger members of parliament, clearly rewarding his moderate supporters but including signficant figures from the conservative wing such as his treasurer and the man tipped as a future leader, Scott Morrison. Polling for the government lifted immediately, and while that had happened to other new leaders, there was little doubt that a very clever and very wealthy man of considerable achievements had taken office.

Malcolm Bligh Turnbull was born in Sydney on 24

October 1954 to Coral Magnolia Lansbury and Bruce Bligh Turnbull. His father was a hotel broker and his mother a radio actor and distant cousin to the British actor Angela Lansbury. His middle name, Bligh, honours an ancestor,John Turnbull, who had supported William Bligh against the Rum Corps in Sydney's early days. His parents separated when Malcolm Turnbull was nine years old and he was raised by his father after his mother moved to New Zealand and later to the US. Turnbull grew up in the electorate he came to represent and went to Vaucluse Public School and then on a scholarship to Sydney Grammar School where he was co-captain in 1972. For the next five years he studied at Sydney University graduating in Arts and Law and during this time he began contributing articles for
Nation Review
and working for radio station 2SM and TV station Channel 9 in Sydney.

In 1978 he won a Rhodes Scholarship, studying at Brasenose College, University of Oxford, graduating with honours in Civil Law in 1980. He contributed to newspapers and magazines in the UK, US and Australia and it was during this time that a university don said of Turnbull that he was ‘always going to enter life's rooms without knocking'. In 1980 he married Lucy Hughes, later a lord mayor of Sydney and a woman of considerable achievements. Originally a Presbyterian, Turnbull converted to Catholicism, the religion of his
wife and much of her family. They returned to Australia and a remarkable decade followed.

In 1983 Turnbull left the Sydney Bar to become general counsel for Consolidated Press Holdings Group during which time he defended his boss, Kerry Packer, against allegations raised during the Costigan Commission. He then formed a legal partnership and in 1986 defended Peter Wright, a former British MI5 agent, blocking the British government's attempt to suppress Wright's book
Spycatcher
. A year later Turnbull founded an investment banking company with former NSW Labor premier Neville Wran and Nicholas Whitlam, son of Gough Whitlam. Whitlam left in 1990 but the firm of Turnbull & Partners flourished until Turnbull went to Goldman Sachs, where he was a managing director and then partner. During this time he was a director of a number of related companies but it was his development, then sale, of OzEmail in the 1990s that saw his already considerable wealth grow even more rapidly.

Intertwined with his legal, journalist and business activities, Turnbull showed early interest in politics, standing for pre-selection for the Liberal Party for the seat he now holds, Wentworth, in a by-election in 1981. He lost and let his Liberal Party membership lapse in the 1980s, not rejoining until 2000. He rose quickly to become the party's treasurer and a member of the NSW
and federal executives as well as serving as a director of the Menzies Research Centre, the party's research organisation.

In addition to all this, from 1993 to 2000 Turnbull was the chairman of the Australian Republican Movement. He accused the then Liberal prime minster, John Howard, of ‘breaking Australia's heart' when the referendum for a republic was lost in 1999. Five years later he again sought entry to federal parliament, this time winning a fiercely contested battle among conservatives for Wentworth in the 2004 election.

Less than two years later John Howard promoted Turnbull from the backbench to become a parliamentary secretary for water at a time of widespread drought. By early 2007 Turnbull was environment minister. It was not all a seamless rise, however. In February 2007 Turnbull was criticised for claiming a government allowance of $175 a night in Canberra and paying it to his wife as rent while living in a townhouse she owned there. At the end of that year the coalition government led by John Howard lost office after eleven years in power, but despite the huge swing against the government, Turnbull increased his majority in Wentworth.

Howard lost his seat and Turnbull made a run for the leadership but was defeated by Brendan Nelson. Ten months later Turnbull made another run and
took the prize in September 2008. Then, just over a a year later in December 2009, largely over the issue of climate change, Turnbull was challenged by Abbott who took the leadership by 42 votes to 41 on a second ballot.