Although his first love was law, Tom Hughes – the father of former Sydney lord mayor Lucy Turnbull – also had a distinguished political career.
It was always assumed that Tom Hughes would follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and become a solicitor. But when he was serving with the Royal Australian Air Force in London during World War II, his curiosity took him to the law courts, where he sat in the public gallery, transfixed by the proceedings.
Tom Hughes at home with daughter Lucy in 1963, the morning after winning the seat of Parkes in the federal election.These cases included that of Elizabeth Evatt, chief judge of the Family Court, who sued when aarticle about the court accused her of overseeing the destruction of family lives with: “the same cold-blooded efficiency that Ilsa Kuhn and her like used in disposing of Jews in Auschwitz and Belsen”.
Thomas Eyre Forrest Hughes was born on November 26, 1923, in Rose Bay. His family were scions of the establishment: upper-middle-class Irish Catholics who were – unusually for the time – loyal to the British Empire. He saw action from 1943 to 1945 in Europe as a flying boat pilot, flying around the Bay of Biscay, escorting Allied convoys and hunting U-boats and enemy ships. In 2005, he was awarded the Legion of Honour – France’s highest military honour – for this work. Ever modest, he said his service was “my rather minimal contribution to the war”.
Then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull with his grandson Jack, wife Lucy and his daughter Daisy, then-son-in-law James Brown, and parents-in-law Tom and Christine Hughes at Government House, 2015.Over the years, his politics gradually mellowed, and he became more moderate and socially liberal, insisting that the Liberal Party should be a broad church.
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