Australia’s election campaign took a personal turn yesterday, with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull telling voters how his father raised him alone after his mother walked out.
The multimillionaire from Sydney’s wealthy eastern suburbs posted an emotional online video tribute to his late father Bruce, saying: “I wouldn’t be where I am today without my dad.”
Turnbull said most of his childhood was spent with his father after his mother left them while he was still in elementary school.
Photo: EPA
“We didn’t have much money, he was a hotel broker and for most of that time he was battling,” he said in the footage released on Sunday.
Asked whether the posting was designed to counter opposition claims that he was out of touch with ordinary Australians ahead of July 2 polls, the prime minister tugged further on the heartstrings.
“When my mother left us, we had nowhere to live,” he told reporters in Melbourne.
“Dad rented a flat and didn’t have any furniture. I think the only bit of furniture we had left was my bed so he had every reason to be a bit unhappy, to say the least.Yet he never, ever said a bad word about her. He never uttered a critical word of my mother in all of those years,” he said.
Turnbull said that after his parents both died — his father was killed aged 56 in a plane crash and his mother died in 1991 — he found letters the pair sent each other over the years.
“The letters, they were filled with sadness and reproach and you know: ‘How could you do this?’ and: ‘Why did you do that?’ and the back and forth,” he said.
“I thought, what does it say about a man? What does it say about his love that he could sit down and write letters like that, pouring out his heart and then turn to his little boy and say: ‘Your mother is the greatest woman in the world and she loves you more than anything.’ What a man. What a great man,” he said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of