Source: Wealth Creator Magazine March/April 2007

From 1993-2000 he chaired the Australian Republican Movement, and in 1997 he was elected to attend the Australian Constitutional Convention held in 1998. Turnbull led the campaign for the establishment of a republic in Australia during this convention and also during the unsuccessful referendum in 1999. In 2001, he retired from his role as chairman. Turnbull has also written two books with regard to the Republican debate, published in 1988 and 1999.

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Malcolm Turnbull: Head Above Water

Source: Wealth Creator Magazine March/April 2007

Malcolm Tunbull facts

In 1999, Turnbull sold OzEmail to MCI Worldcom at a reported price of AU$60 million, which, upon entering politics, allegedly made him Australia’s richest parliamentarian.

Malcolm Turnbull: Head Above Water

Malcolm TurnbullMalcolm Turnbull has a long history of high academic achievement, with a background in arts and law. He has worked as a political journalist and a barrister, he has had a profitable career in business and has orchestrated a successful move into politics.

Malcolm Turnbull was born in 1954 in NSW and grew up in the suburbs of Vaucluse and Double Bay and attended the local primary school. His parents divorced when he was nine, and he lived with his father in a small flat. His father believed in the quality of education, and chose to send Turnbull to the well-respected but expensive Sydney Grammar School, as a boarder. Despite Turnbull attaining some scholarship assistance, his father, a broker, often struggled to pay the remaining school fees and sacrificed many aspects of his life in order that his son could attend a good school. It was during his school holidays that Turnbull also received some on-site entrepreneurial training, often accompanying his father on business trips, which provided him with valuable knowledge for his future in business. His father’s encouragement has clearly remained with him throughout his life, even helping him tap into political issues. In his maiden speech in 2004 after winning the Wentworth electorate, he reminisced, “(my father’s sacrifice) came back to be vividly when…the Labour Party was declaring the so-called ‘elite’ schools deserved little or no government funding, I knew exactly which parents that policy would hurt most: the battlers the renters, the Bruce Turnbulls of today – who chose to sacrifice their personal comforts so they can give their children the education they choose.”  In fact, in 1979, Turnbull set up an additional means tested scholarship for Sydney Grammar School in memory of his late father.

Turnbull’s father’s investment in his son’s education paid dividends, as Turnbull acquired a place at the University of Sydney, where he graduated with a double degree in arts and law. He then furthered his study of law at Oxford University after receiving a Rhodes Scholarship. It was while he was studying at Oxford that he met his future wife, Lucy, who he married in England in 1980.  They returned to Australia later that year, where Lucy too developed a prominent career in business and law, becoming the first female Lord Mayor of Sydney. Turnbull describes his wife as his “partner in life, in love, in law and in business”, and she clearly also represents the backbone of his political campaigning.

Read the full article in the current issue of Wealth Creator with Bob Hawke on the front cover. Out Now!