From The Australian
The former Liberal leader also claims to have been the mastermind behind the creation of an Australian version of the left-wing news site The Guardian, urging its UK boss to set up in Australia, brokering its funding and also being instrumental in appointing two senior press gallery journalists, Lenore Taylor and Katharine Murphy, to run its editorial direction out of Canberra.
Mr Turnbull admits that he would have personally funded the project himself, which would have required $20m, but couldn’t because he was a politician.
“Given my political role, I could hardly participate myself but I knew someone who would,” Mr Turnbull writes. He then retells the story of how he approached businessman Graeme Wood, who was on “the political left” and had been a generous donor to the Greens, and persuaded him to “use his fortune to bankroll an Australian edition of The Guardian”.
Mr Turnbull admits that even The Guardian then “rarely endorsed my or my government’s policies”. At the same time, he repeats his claims that the loss of his leadership was not the result of his own political failings but a conspiracy of “the right-wing thugs” with the complicity of conservative media, including The Australian and Sky News.
Mr Turnbull repeats false claims of a Murdoch family conspiracy to depose him in favour of his predecessor Tony Abbott.
In the book, A Bigger Picture, Mr Turnbull devotes many pages to divulging highly personal and confidential messages between colleagues, including detailed WhatsApp conversations and diary entries quoting messages from his senior colleagues and others, including journalists from Nine newspapers. He also quotes a private conversation with then US president Barack Obama, who told him not to worry about the prospect of the election of Donald Trump, saying Americans would never elect a “lunatic” to the White House.
Yet, despite releasing swaths of confidential messages and conversations, Mr Turnbull admonishes his former colleagues, political rivals and others throughout the book for releasing confidential information and cabinet considerations.
He does not mention that throughout Mr Abbott’s time as prime minister, the political interests of Mr Turnbull and his supporters were often leaked, including cabinet discussions, to embarrass Mr Abbott.
