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feature
Camperdown
to Canberra
In this election year, SAM invited federal parliamentarians who went to Sydney to
reflect on their student years and how the University shaped their political ambitions.
Three Liberal MPs, two ALP and one Independent responded.
WORDS
matthew
benns
When did you decide to
follow a career in politics?
Was there a moment or
incident at university that
prompted you to look at
this career?
Tony Abbott (Lib)
People don’t usually decide to
‘have a career in politics’ the way
they might decide to have a career
in medicine, for instance, because
there is no standard path to getting
into parliament or other political
positions. There’s no university
course you can do or accredited
training that leads more-or-less
automatically to a job in politics.
What normally happens is that
people become interested and
look for opportunities. In my
case, I’d always been interested
in politics. I’d run for the SRC at
university, had frequently written
about politics as a journalist and
had been a press secretary to John
Hewson when he was opposition
leader. But I actually decided to run
when I heard, in January 1994, that
Michael MacKellar was retiring as
Warringah Liberal MP and learned
from John Howard that it was a
pretty open pre-selection.
Malcolm Turnbull
(Lib)
I always had an interest in running
for parliament, from when I was a
schoolboy in fact, but it wasn’t a
burning, monomaniacal ambition
to the exclusion of all others.
Bronwyn Bishop (Lib)
I actually decided to go into
politics when I was 16, at school
and studying contemporary
European history. It showed me
that individuals can make
a difference for good or for evil.
Hitler was a clear example of evil
and Churchill a force for good.
I also thought that people seem
to fall into one of two groups,
those who make decisions and
those who have decisions made
for them. I wanted to be one of
the decision makers and I knew in
Australia, even in the late 1950s,
SAM mar 2013 23