I've managed to get hold of a copy of Malcolm Turnbull's blockbuster, 'A Bigger Picture'. It does, as expected, pour scorn on people he doesn't like, such as Tony Abbott, but also highlights Turnbull's own failings, which he clearly doesn't recognise in himself. He's always been seen as arrogant, and that certainly comes through in his memoir but there's a shallowness about him and a lack of understanding about what is fair and right which marks him as having been affected by the silvertail lifestyle he has adopted.
Without any embarrassment, he states that he and Lucy always had an ambition to be 'independently wealthy; which is code for 'filthy rich'. He set about to achieve that ambition by dealing with crooks like Christopher Skase and Alan Bond, and even greasing the wheels for disgraced Queensland Police Commissioner, Terry Lewis. What do they say about lying down with pigs?
He is also scathing about everybody else in politics, on both sides of the fence. He criticises the NBN proposal of the Labor Government without acknowledging that his own replacement plan has been shown to be inadequate; it lacks ambition and has no capacity to be upgraded in the future.
There's a smugness about the book which will endear him to very few people.
I found the most interesting part was when he talked about his childhood. He went to Sydney Grammar, of course, and talked about studying Latin using a textbook by Hillard and Botting, the same book I had used more than a decade before. I also hadn't realised he was a boarder during the early 70s when the boarding house was in St Marks Road, Randwick. He says he always went to the Randwick Presbyterian Church on Sundays and that was the period when Marilyn and I lived in a flat behind the church and I was responsible for the cleaning there. No doubt I had polished the pew where the young Turnbull rested his bottom during the sermon. I feel humbled that I played a small part in making Malcolm Turnbull the man he is today.
Without any embarrassment, he states that he and Lucy always had an ambition to be 'independently wealthy; which is code for 'filthy rich'. He set about to achieve that ambition by dealing with crooks like Christopher Skase and Alan Bond, and even greasing the wheels for disgraced Queensland Police Commissioner, Terry Lewis. What do they say about lying down with pigs?
He is also scathing about everybody else in politics, on both sides of the fence. He criticises the NBN proposal of the Labor Government without acknowledging that his own replacement plan has been shown to be inadequate; it lacks ambition and has no capacity to be upgraded in the future.
There's a smugness about the book which will endear him to very few people.
I found the most interesting part was when he talked about his childhood. He went to Sydney Grammar, of course, and talked about studying Latin using a textbook by Hillard and Botting, the same book I had used more than a decade before. I also hadn't realised he was a boarder during the early 70s when the boarding house was in St Marks Road, Randwick. He says he always went to the Randwick Presbyterian Church on Sundays and that was the period when Marilyn and I lived in a flat behind the church and I was responsible for the cleaning there. No doubt I had polished the pew where the young Turnbull rested his bottom during the sermon. I feel humbled that I played a small part in making Malcolm Turnbull the man he is today.
No comments:
Post a Comment