Early Life
Beazley was born in Perth, Western Australia. His father, Kim Beazley Snr, was the Labor MP for Fremantle from 1945 to 1977 and education minister in the Whitlam Government (1972–75). His mother, Betty Judge, is a former Australian athletics champion and record-holder.
Beazley contracted polio as a child, at the age of six.
Beazley was educated at Hollywood Senior High School and later at the University of Western Australia and Balliol College, Oxford (having been a 1973 Rhodes Scholar), where he gained a Master of Philosophy degree. At Oxford, he befriended Tony Blair, who would become a British prime minister, and Geoff Gallop, later to be a premier of Western Australia. After he returned to Australia, he tutored and lectured in politics at Perth's Murdoch University, recruited to Labor's right-wing faction by Graham Richardson and John Ducker, before being elected MP for the seat of Swan at the 1980 election.
Read more about this topic: Kim Beazley
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“It was common practice for me to take my children with me whenever I went shopping, out for a walk in a white neighborhood, or just felt like going about in a white world. The reason was simple enough: if a black man is alone or with other black men, he is a threat to whites. But if he is with children, then he is harmless, adorable.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“All that a pacifist can undertakebut it is a very great dealis to refuse to kill, injure or otherwise cause suffering to another human creature, and untiringly to order his life by the rule of love though others may be captured by hate.”
—Vera Brittain (18961970)