Rt Hon Amber Rudd MP presents Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull with Policy Exchange’s 2017 Disraeli Prize

presented to
Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP
Prime Minister of Australia

by
Rt Hon Amber Rudd MP
Home Secretary

chaired by
Dean Godson
Director of Policy Exchange

Policy Exchange was delighted to award the 2017 Disraeli prize – in honour of Britain’s first Prime Minister from a minority background, Benjamin Disraeli.

The Prize was awarded to Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP, the Prime Minister of Australia.

Malcolm Turnbull is Leader of the Liberal Party and the 29th Prime Minister of Australia, and won re-election in a close fought contest in 2016 which saw the Liberal/National Coalition retain a majority government by a single seat.  He was Leader of the Opposition from 2008-9 and served as Minister for Communications under Tony Abbott from 2013-15.

A former Rhodes scholar with a degree in law, Malcolm Turnbull spent more than two decades as a journalist, lawyer, investment banker and venture capitalist  before finally entering politics in 2004 as the Member of Parliament for Wentworth in New South Wales.  His stance on issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion, and renewable energy targets and emissions intensity schemes have brought him into tension with more conservative-leaning members of  his party over the years.

He is the author of The Spycatcher Trial (1988) which drew on his experiences whilst defending  Peter Wright, the former MI5 official who wrote the book Spycatcher and successfully stopped the British Government’s attempts to prevent the book’s publication in Australia.