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:
“As I went forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping; on this side huddled together, with their gray hairs streaming, in a secluded valley which the sun had not penetrated; on that, hurrying off in Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Midway along the journey of our life [Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita] I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path.”
—Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)