Education
He spent his first three years of school at Vaucluse Public School. He continued his primary education at the Sydney Grammar Prep, St Ives. He then went to Sydney Grammar School's senior school at College Street in Sydney.
While at university in Sydney he worked as a political journalist for Nation Review.He then studied for a Bachelor of Civil Law degree at Brasenose College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar from 1978 to 1980. While at Oxford he worked for The Sunday Times as well as contributing to newspapers and magazines in the United States and Australia.