Australia: Rolling the Prime Ministerial Dice

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On 15 September, Malcolm Turnbull became Australia’s 29th Prime Minister. Incumbents have enjoyed an average of just under four years in the post since Federation in 1901. However, the country has had five prime ministerial appointments in the last eight years, so cynics have been quick to suggest that the country is heading for chronic political instability in line with Italy.
Turnbull represents the stereotype of the self-made man. Brought up by his father after his mother left the family, Turnbull achieved well at school and, after completing undergraduate studies in Sydney, he won a Rhodes scholarship to study in Oxford. His widely recognised powerful intellect quickly set him on the path to achievement in a variety of fields.
In his 60 years of life, Turnbull has worked as a journalist, lawyer, investment banker and venture capitalist, accumulating a sizeable fortune in the process. His name regularly appears among lists of Australia’s wealthiest people. However, he is no unthinking Conservative for whom change is anathema. On the contrary, as chair of the Australian Republican Movement from 1993-2000, Turnbull showed that he was very much a man of the 21st century.
He was elected to Federal Parliament in 2004 and subsequently served for three years in ministerial positions in the Howard and Abbott conservative coalition governments before ousting Tony Abbott from the Prime Ministership in a party room vote last month.
Abbott and Turnbull represent the two wings of the Australian Liberal Party: the conservative wing and the socially liberal wing. So while Abbott vigorously opposed contentious changes on abortion and same-sex marriage, Turnbull supported such proposals. Such is the nature of the curiously-named Australian Liberal Party.
On matters of religious faith, the arrival of Turnbull may well lead to a reduction in religious discourse from government. Abbott was a practising Catholic, strongly supported by the conservative Christian vote, with some of his appointed ministers outspoken about the need to preserve Australia’s Judeo-Christian heritage.
Although Turnbull attended a local Presbyterian church in Sydney as a teenager, he converted to Roman Catholicism to align with the family of his wife. His statements on his faith position are somewhat enigmatic. On the one hand, he has described himself to the press as a "very imperfect Catholic”. On the other hand, he has expressed an interest in matters of faith, commenting as follows in a recent interview: “I think religion is very much a mystery. … I definitely believe in God. I enjoy learning more about the way in which other faiths, and other traditions within the Christian church for that matter, explore that mystery.”
On the day of the siege of Sydney’s Lindt Café by a Muslim gunman last December, Turnbull attended a Catholic mass at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney. In a subsequent parliamentary speech, Turnbull mused on the contrast of emotions that filled the city: “You could feel the love of Christ in that cathedral ... So much hatred had caused so much harm and death … but there in the rest of the city it was filled with love. Then you saw … people coming, laying their flowers, showing their strength, showing their solidarity and showing that love is always stronger than hate.”
Turnbull’s self- questioning of his Catholic credentials no doubt relates to his policy statements that conflict with Catholic Church positions. In Parliament he supported legislation relaxing restrictions on an abortion pill. He also supported other legislation relating to stem cell transfer, commenting in December 2006: “... our society has already reached a conclusion to the effect that an embryo at this very early stage is more in the nature of a potential than an actual human being and that the rights of this microscopic bundle of cells are not equal to those of a foetus, let alone a newborn baby.”
On the vexed issue of the current worldwide refugee crisis, Turnbull has adopted a more conservative line, arguing for accepting more Syrian Christians in the recently-announced additional intake of 12,000 refugees. Turnbull is clearly very concerned about the plight of Christian communities in Syria. He explained his views in the following terms "they are a minority, they survived in Syria, they've been there for thousands of years, literally since the time of Christ… But in an increasingly sectarian Middle East, you have to ask whether … the spaces that they were able to live and survive in will any longer be available."
Turnbull is still enjoying the honeymoon period at the beginning of his prime ministership. However his party has bounced back strongly in public opinion surveys since his assumption of the post. It seems highly likely that Australia’s rapid changing of the prime ministerial guard in recent years will not continue.

This article first appeared in "Evangelicals Now", November 2015, p9.

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