Malcolm Turnbull

Malcolm Bligh Turnbull (born 24 October 1954) is an Australian former politician, businessman and barrister who served as the 29th prime minister of Australia from 2015 to 2018. He held office as leader of the Liberal Party from 2008 to 2009 and again from 2015 to 2018, and was the member of parliament (MP) for the New South Wales division of Wentworth from 2004 to 2018.

Born in Sydney, Turnbull graduated from the University of Sydney as a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Laws, before attending Brasenose College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, earning a Bachelor of Civil Law degree. For more than two decades, he worked as a journalist, lawyer, merchant banker, and venture capitalist. He was Chair of the Australian Republican Movement from 1993 to 2000, and was one of the leaders of the unsuccessful "Yes" campaign in the 1999 republic referendum. He was first elected to the Australian House of Representatives as a member of parliament (MP) for the division of Wentworth in New South Wales at the 2004 election, and was Minister for the Environment and Water in the Howard government from January 2007 until December 2007.

After coming second in the 2007 leadership election, Turnbull won the leadership of the Liberal Party in a leadership spill the following year and became Leader of the Opposition. However, his support of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme proposed by the Rudd government in December 2009 led in turn to a leadership challenge by Tony Abbott, who defeated Turnbull by a single vote. Though initially planning to leave politics after this, Turnbull chose to remain and was later appointed Minister for Communications in the Abbott government following the Liberal-National Coalition's victory at the 2013 election.