As a recent immigrant, I skipped much of the preamble of times I didn't know, and went straight for his time during the Rudd/Gillard years and forward from there.

Turnbull clearly thinks a lot of himself. In many ways, he's a politician from a bygone era: one that appears well-read and clever, and one that appreciates the gravity of the office, rather than one that wears baseball hats and regurgitates meaningless slogans about giving something a go if you want to give it a go.

He's proud of his work for the NBN, and I have to say, after reading this, that he is across the technology in a way that almost every other politician is not. He doesn't describe it as a triumph, he describes it quite strongly as a pragmatic and imperfect choice, and I would tend to agree with him there. It probably shouldn't have been done at all, but it does appear that he made the most from a poor hand.

He paints his party in a poor light, and rightly so in my opinion - Australian politics seems to be a messy, juvenile business with very little to redeem it. Turnbull has a lot of similarities with Tony Blair, in my mind - the same background and the same view of themselves as intellectuals and quiet, careful thinkers. I didn't always agree with Blair's politics, but I think - excepting the war - that he was the best prime minister the UK has had in my lifetime. I'm not sure I can say the same about Turnbull, but given the succession of bloody idiots who have held the Australian PM position over the last fifteen years, I suspect Turnbull's not the worst by any means.